Weak Handles

Written by Administrator

Friday, 06 January 2006

Where have all the good handles gone? No I don’t mean players with skills with the pill, I mean nicknames. In today’s era in the NBA, people have gotten quite lazy with their nicknames. This wasn’t always the case – dudes used to have creative and unique handles, a legacy that AND 1 is keeping but the NBA is not. Today’s league is full of boring, uncreative nicknames where the players’ initials, jersey number or shortened name is used as a nickname. The Raptors are as guilty as anyone of this – CB4, MoPete, Hoffa, Charlie V – boring, boring, boring & boring once again. Thank god for Chuck Swirtsky, who coined Matt Bonner the Red Rocket – at least he didn’t name him MaBo. The top stars of the league also have dull monikers – T Mac, D-Wade, KG, A.I., Melo – blah, blah, blah. Now Shawn Marion’s nickname – The Matrix, due to his time & space altering moves – now that is a throwback nickname... I grew up during the late 80s – early 90s era of the NBA, where cool nicknames prevailed. Magic, Air, Human Highlight Reel, and my personal favourite, The Round Mound of Rebound for Sir Charles Barkley. The bad boy Detroit Piston championship teams of this era were full of colourful characters and names – Zeke, Worm, Spider, Microwave. Now don’t even try to tell me that they would have won as many titles if they had gone by today’s style nicknames – I.T., D-Rod, JoSal or V-Johnson. It’s not very hard to come up with a good nickname. Pete Maravich and Chuck Person both used to shoot a lot, so their names became Pistol Pete and The Rifleman respectively. Pretty simple stuff. Darryl Dawkins used to dunk so hard he shattered numerous backboards so his name was Chocolate Thunder. Back in the day when he was an All-World talent and top defender Gary Payton got the moniker the Glove, not G-Pay (come to think of it that isn’t a bad nickname!). Players used to become their nickname – many of them even dropped their given first names for their nickname. Magic Johnson, Spud Webb, Muggsy Bogues, Mookie Blaylock, Cornbread Maxwell, Pig Miller. Then there was the two John Williams – one became Hot Rod, the other Hot Plate (guess which one was the fat one!). Players even took it a step further in the past and legally changed their names to a more colourful one. So NBA great Lloyd B. Free became World B. Free. If an All-NBA performer is brave enough to change his name, then why can’t Steve Nash legally change his name to Captain Canada? What I’m trying to start here is a revolution and I need the Hooplife readers help. Let’s bring back the era of cool nicknames. Stop calling Charlie Villanueva “Charlie V” and instead use his other moniker, The Big Smooth. But that’s only a start. I want all our readers to put their noggins together and forward me new, creative nicknames for NBA stars. I will publish them in an upcoming article so we can start the revolution. Hit me up at Let the revolution begin! Words by Jeff Fox HoopLife.ca No one has commented on this article. Please login or register to post comments. J! Reactions • General Site License Copyright © 2006 S. A. DeCaro

 

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