How NBA Players Got Their Nicknames

How NBA Players Got Their Nicknames

Great Sports nicknames add flavor to the game and if we’re being honest it’s easier to say Greek Freak than anent anent on sentao right some players become so synonymous with their nicknames you actually forget their real names this is how NBA players got their nicknames and who better to start off

With than the answer himself Allan Iverson when AI first came to the NBA one of his friends said that when Jordan retired the league would be in trouble from a marketing standpoint and that he well he was the answer to their prayers and shortly thereafter Iverson and his

Friend went to a tattoo shop and got the answer on his arm like Iverson Robert Williams also has a big arm tattoo which says loyalty however that that’s not his nickname Robert Williams is better known as the time Lord I mean sounds pretty cool right well funny enough Williams

Got his nickname by constantly being late oversleeping at an introductory press conference when he got drafted and subsequently missing a flight to Boston as well as the team’s first practice the dude operated on his own time and this next nickname also belongs to a former Celtic and this one spread like

Wildfire because once it was said it took only 24 hours to become a household name after Paul Pierce dropped 42 on the Lakers in 2001 Shaq he said this my name is Shaquille O’Neal and Paul Pierce is the mother truth as soon as Shack said this all his friends and fans started calling

Paul Pierce the truth and let’s be honest he is still the truth today however Pierce wasn’t the only Superstar whom shaed blessed with a nickname when O’Neal got traded to Miami it did not take long for him to give Dwayne Wade his new nickname due to his unreal speed

And quickness Shaq started calling Wade The Flash and Shaq well he was also pretty famous for calling Chris Anderson Birdman Birdman Birdman Birdman but you know it wasn’t really Shaq who gave Birdman this nickname it actually came from his teammates who started calling him that because of his absolutely crazy

Wingspan and unreal blocking prowess of course Anderson would ALS also later pay homage to his nickname with a tattoo that said Freebird and even Shaq’s colleagues on Inside the NBA are no strangers to giving out nicknames you see in the early 2000s when the Matrix movies came out Kenny Smith compared

Shawn Marion to Neo due to his speed and reflexes and pretty soon everybody started calling Maran The Matrix as for some other players they got their nicknames from their jersey numbers like CP3 or PG-13 but the best nickname involving a jersey number belonged to the greatest Russian player ever Andre

Keno the initials AK and the number 47 on the Jersey made it pretty easy to get his nickname but to make things even crazier Keno was born in EF like the literal town where the AK-47 rifle was manufactured and while it’s generally uncool to give yourself a nickname you

Get a pass if you’re Kobe Bryant you see when explaining how he attacks the basket Kobe compared himself to a black m one of the quickest and most venomous snakes in the world I am that Killer Snake you know I’m Stone Cold Man and while Kobe was one of the most

Legendarily good NBA players the most legendarily bad NBA player became one of the most famous partly because he made a joke with Kobe’s nickname Brian scalabrini often joked about his lack of athleticism and during one presser he called himself The White Mamba as a counterpart to Kobe’s nickname you see

The idea behind the white Mamba came to Brian when he was wearing white Kobe shoes and said that the shoes were called White Mamba ones another nons Superstar who everyone knows about is young and just like scalabrini and Kobe young gave himself the nickname Swaggy P

One version of the story is that God came to Nick in a dream and told him the nickname himself the other the more believable version that is is that his friends started calling him swaggy due to his fashion sense and he just added the P when asked what the p means Nick

Really wouldn’t tell but based on his exploits that were revealed to us by D’Angelo Russell we have a pretty good idea of what that all means ah and speaking of eggplants if we said the nickname chocolate thunder or double D would you think of some adult film star

Or a basketball player well if you guess the latter you would be correct because it belonged to Daryl Dawkins the first NBA player who came to the league directly from high school Dawkins was one of the funniest characters in NBA history and he gave himself a plethora

Of nicknames over the years including Dr Duncan Stein master of disaster and Sir slam but his most famous nickname the chocolate thunder well it was actually given to Daryl by none other than Stevie Wonder Stevie Wonder used to come to the ball games and they would have a guy

Sitting with him and the guy would be telling him what’s going on in the game and he would say hey the big chocolate guy just put down a thunder dunk the chocolate guy with another monster dunk and that’s why Stevie Wonder started calling me chocolate thunder which is

Pretty funny that you get your basketball nickname from a guy who never could see you play and speaking of chocolate we can’t forget Jason Williams who threw some of the nastiest dime times ever seen on NBA floors because of his super attractive style of play he earned the cult nickname white chocolate

Williams was of course white but he played like he was one of the Harlem Globe trods so he got the nickname white chocolate given to him by a Sacramento Kings PR employee and got to be one of the best passers in NBA history is called The Chosen One or the king the

Name King James was widespread by Nike when they signed LeBron in 2003 but LeBron himself was the king long before that after won his first high school championship in 1999 the fans in akan well they started calling him King and it stuck one of LeBron’s best friends

And Main rivals in the NBA is Kevin Durant AKA KD AKA The Slim Reaper but Durant he really never liked that last nickname when asked about the origins of it Katie simply said cuz I’m skinny and I do my work at night however these days most people are using Easy Money Sniper

As his nickname as per his Instagram handle and KD recently said that his mom used to have a crush on this guy named Hakeem elijuan a man who they called The Dream he was nicknamed the dream in college after he dunked so effortlessly that his coach said it looked like a

Dream and seven years later after Hakeem became the number one pick in the NBA there was another first overall pick who had won one of the funniest nicknames ever Larry Johnson was the first pick of the 1991 draft the Rookie of the Year and a two-time All-Star Johnson was not

Shy to get in front of the cameras and he’s mostly remembered for his role in the original space Jem however his nickname didn’t come because of some Bugs Bunny reference and in fact stems from Larry’s role in somewhat bizarre Converse commercials where he was dressed as Mrs Doubtfire or media if you

Like Tyler Perry Larry embraced the nickname Grandma ma that he played in the commercials and that’s how most people called him for the rest of his career but probably one of the weirdest origin stories of someone’s nickname belongs to Richard Rip Hamilton who got his nickname name from his father after

He was constantly ripping his diapers as a baby o yikes that must have smelled bad however it is one thing to get a cool sing nickname but then there are those guys that really become their nickname I mean their nickname literally becomes them and nobody calls them by

Their real name anymore now granted there aren’t many people who can say that but for Irvin Johnson AKA magic I mean it it suited him like a hands to a glove Johnson was first called Magic when he was a star at Everett High School in Michigan he was given theck

Named by a sports Rider who had just seen the 15-year-old dominate the game with 36 points 16 rebounds and 16 assists with crazy no look and behind the back passes but when Magic first came to the NBA there was one Superstar more famous than all of the others his

Name was Julius Irving but everyone called him Dr J or just the doctor and like magic Julius got his nickname in high school as well one of Irving’s teammates was called the professor so he found it fitting that Irving gets called the doctor because do of his surgeon-like Precision but when it comes

To multiple nicknames there’s no player in the NBA that comes close to Shaquille O’Neal who invented most of his alter egos by himself the diesel The Big Aristotle shakas Shak Fu the big Shamrock and of course Superman which he was very reluctant to share with Dwight Howard but that that’s a story for

Another video Sha’s dear dear friend Charles Barkley also had multiple nicknames but there are three that really really stand out the round mound of rebounds now that one is pretty self-explanatory he got that nickname in college because he weighed over 300 lb while being the best rebounder in the

NCA when he got to the NBA his jaw-dropping skills inspired one writer to call him Sir Charles even though Barkley was never really nighted and I mean Barkley liked that nickname but he hated to be called Charlie and when he played for Phoenix his coach Paul Westfall randomly started to call him

Chuck and soon well it’s stuck and now pretty much everybody calls him Chuck or the chuckster Barkley’s teammate on the Dream Team Mr Larry Bird was named Larry Legend even before his legendary career was over given to him by reporter Peter vessie and Bird’s other famous nickname

Larry well he actually gave it to himself when the media asked him why he doesn’t love the attention like his arch rival Magic Johnson Larry simply said I am just a hick from French Lick Indiana and this name that’s stayed with him forever of course you all know we can’t

Talk about birden magic without mentioning Michael Jordan who also had a few nicknames himself we have to start out with the name on all his sneakers air and if you watch the Ben Affleck movie called air then you know that the nickname came from his agent David Fulk

Nikes just developed these new running shoes that have air technology that is supposed to cushion your feet and it’s a double on Tandra in the way Michael Jordan plays basketball in the air people later started calling Jordan His Airness but one of the nicknames that he

Gave himself was Black Jesus I have 10 and he has four points right I’m doing all this talk and he’s like okay end of the game in the second half he ended up with 44 and I ended up with 12 and as he’s walking off he’s like be sure and be

Careful you never talk to black Jesus like that but you see Jordan wasn’t the first NBA player to be called Black Jesus the original the OG nickname belonged to Earl The Pearl Monroe who got nicknamed Jesus which was was absolutely beautifully explained and he got G you know what they call him what

Jesus that’s what they call him Jesus cuz he was the truth after the movie came out Ray Allen often got called by his character in the movie and when the NBA experimented with nicknames on jerseys Allen’s Jersey actually said Jesus shuttles sword but while the nicknames became more common in the

Modern era some old school Ballers had some pretty unique names as well Wilt Chamberlain well he was called the Big Dipper because he regularly had to actually dip his head down to avoid banging his head on the door frame Jerry West was the first who was nicknamed Mr

Clutch due to his clutch Jean especially after the half court buzzer beater in the NBA Finals but after the NBA put his silhouette on its logo West is commonly referred to now as the logo which I think is way cooler however while some players get called by their nicknames by

Commentators or are even mentioned by their nicknames in third person they they really don’t get called that by their friends or their teammates you see when somebody needed Jerry West for something they didn’t say hey Mr Clutch come over here or when somebody’s talking to Joel embiid they won’t call

Him the process but then there are those nicknames that become so embodied with a person that you use that moniker so much that you actually Forget Their real name Penny hardaway’s real name was anony but not even his mother calls him Anthony Penny got the nickname from his grandma

When he was born she referred to him as pretty baby however because of her southern accent pretty started to sound like Penny another player who’s always referred to by his nickname is Big Baby Davis his real name is Glenn but again nobody called him that four decades

Davis was always very very emotional and was always complaining and when he was just 9 years old his coach told him stop crying you big baby now funny enough Davis’s coach with the Celtics was also named Glenn but just like Davis nobody calls Doc Rivers by his real name and

All he had to do to earn that nickname was come to his first college basketball practice in a Dr J t-shirt and because he was so athletic soon everybody just started calling him Doc and the name it just stuck and for a guy who is Anonymous with both those Glenns is

Kevin Garnett first because he literally made Big Baby Davis cry during a game and because he solidified Rivers his coaching career proving that anything possible kg was known by the nickname the kid when he first came to Minnesota because again he came directly from high school but soon he started absolutely

Dominating after which the Timberwolves commentator dubbed him the big ticket and it was pretty fitting because he was literally the sole reason why the Timberwolves fans paid tickets to see the games and a quick glance at some current players there are really a lot of fantastic nicknames in the NBA right

Now like Grand Theft Alvarado tsunami poppy or hillbilly Kobe the college nickname of Austin Reeves and if you wish to find out more amazing stories from the NBA please subscribe to our Channel and we will make your wish come true

Ever wonder where your favorite NBA player’s nickname came from? Look no further.

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