Best NBA Player Nicknames & The Origin Story: Basketball Reference

Michael Jordan was always the coolest person on the planet. As a result, it’s no wonder that he had some of the best nicknames ever: “Mike”, “MJ”, and “His Airness”. However, his finest moniker was “Air Jordan” since he spent the most of his time in the air. Jordan was a different type of athlete than the NBA had ever seen when he arrived in the mid-1980s. He might appear to float in the air and hang there till simple mortals returned to Earth.

Best NBA Player Nicknames & The Origin Story

Thousands of these NBA nicknames, from famous to obscure, may be found on Basketball-Reference’s player pages. They are manually entered by a small crew led by Mike Lynch, Sports-Reference’s Director of Data.

Many of the nicknames displayed on player websites are never utilized in NBA conversation. LeBron James, Manu Ginobili, and Carmelo Anthony, for example, have songs like “The Little Emperor,” “Argentina’s Flying Man,” and “Sweet Melon.”

LeBron James, like all of the pantheon players, has a slew of nicknames: “The Chosen One” (which was tatted on his back as a youngster), “The Akron Hammer,” and, of course, “King James.” The reign of LeBron James over the NBA has been absurdly long and uniquely consistent – he averaged 28.9 PPG, 8.3 RPG and 6.8 APG in this, his 20th season. He’s also the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, which is one of the many records he holds.

Lloyd B. Free, one of the NBA’s early heat check scoring guards, had such a distinctive nickname – “World B. Free” – that he officially changed his first name to “World”. A buddy allegedly gave Free the moniker because of his propensity to bury deep shots from “around the world.”

Lynch and the rest of the Basketball-Reference staff are always on the lookout for new nicknames to include in the site’s database. Lynch has combed through old NBA encyclopedias, almanacs, and publications in order to restore some of the earlier nicknames that had been lost to time.

“There was this player from the [1940s and 1950s] named George Senesky, who, in multiple places, was referred to as ‘The Human Handcuff,'” Lynch said. “That was an era where steals weren’t even recorded, so it was neat to learn a player’s strengths and weaknesses through a nickname.

“The old newspaper writers were almost like salesmen, selling the game with the way that they wrote. They really leaned on nicknames quite a bit, so you can pull some pretty cool stuff out of there.”

Rafer Alston was a rare streetballer who was skilled enough (and disciplined enough) to make it to the NBA. His moniker, made popular by one of the earliest And-1 mixtapes, was “Skip 2 My Lou.” Alston had every move conceivable off the dribble, as well as some major flare, but he wisely toned it down during NBA play.

Many nicknames make it onto the site as a result of this procedure, even if they are not well recognized or used. For example, “World B. Flat” was put to Kyrie Irving’s profile two years ago as a tribute to World B. Free and a nod to his previous comments on conspiracy theories.

“It’s such tremendous work by whoever came up with it,” he remarked. “It was cited in enough different places that it felt warranted.”

NBA broadcasts are yet another source of gold for the site’s database. Rajon Rondo got one of his nicknames from a Steve Smith piece on NBA TV.

“Stacey King is a real gift to us,” Lynch said of the Bulls color commentator, who has given birth to nicknames like Thad “Thagic Johnson” Young, Jimmy “Jimmy G. Buckets” Butler, and Patrick “The Paw” Williams.

The term “Black Mamba” was a little lame at first since Kobe Bryant gave it to himself. But after a while, it seemed too appropriate not to embrace. His work ethic was renowned, and his perfection – whether it was his footwork, movements, attacking angles, or anything – was as quick and lethal as his venomous snake reputation would imply.

In actuality, Shaquille O’Neal had so many nicknames linked with him that it was hard to pick the greatest one. Even the moniker “Shaq” is actually a nickname. Throughout his career, Shaq has a tendency of giving himself new hilarious/ridiculous nicknames every few years, such as “The Big Aristotle”, “Superman”, “Shaq Daddy”, and “The Big Shamrock”.

In other cases, players choose their own nicknames. Darryl Dawkins, a favorite of Lynch’s, went by nicknames ranging from “Chocolate Thunder” to “Zandokan the Mad Dunker.” Dawkins, who claimed to be from the planet Lovetron, is one of the site’s nickname leaders, with 19 monikers.

Surprisingly, Kevin Durant has dismissed most of his media and fan-generated nicknames in favor of promoting himself as “The Servant.” That one is odd, and I don’t immediately think “Kevin Durant” when I hear it. Some of his other ones, such as “Slim Reaper,” “Durantula,” and even “Easy Money Sniper,” are far more relevant. Personally, I believe “Slim Reaper” is the greatest of the lot due to the manner in which he dispatches opponents with cold-blooded shots all around the court.

The nickname sections on player pages can be amusing and goofy, but they also have a historical purpose, as does everything else on the site.

“We think of ourselves as a repository for facts,” Lynch went on to say. “A nickname is a secondary fact.” But we don’t want to remove pieces of history for no good reason.”

“Most were first and last initial or something like ‘T-Mac’, ‘KG,’ things like that,” Lynch went on to say.

That trend is being reversed thanks to social media.

 

 

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