Name That Man

January 1, 2011 | From: Wolves Radio

The other day, after watching Blake Griffin soar from the rafters to throw down a few thunderous dunks during the Wolves-Clippers game at Staples Center I began to think that a guy with Griffins freakish talent needs a nickname.

It's hard to just call him 'Blake' or 'Griffin', there has to be some moniker that can be bestowed upon him that describes just what he is able to do night in and night out.

And after watching what Kevin Love has done this season I felt he deserves one too.  Anytime you talk about a guy who is re-writing history books and doing something in a totally different way than everyone else there has got to be a nickname just waiting around the corner.

Then I started thinking about the great nicknames throughout the history of the NBA and started wondering, 'where have all the good nicknames gone?'

Back in the day there was, Maurice "The Enforcer" Lucas, Ervin 'Magic' Johnson, 'Air' Jordan, Dominique Wilkens "The Human Highlight Film", 'Never Nervous' Pervis Ellison, Charles Barkley "The Round Mound Of Rebound" I mean the list goes on and on, 'The Big Dipper' Wilt Chamberlain, John 'Hondo' Havlicek, and 'The Admiral' David Robinson, all great, creative and descriptive nicknames.

But it seems in recent years we, fans and broadcasters, have gotten lazy with nicknames.  Rather than come up with something really creative, funny, or use even simple alliteration, we have gone the route of initials.

Shaq tried to keep the tradition of nicknames alive, calling Paul Pierce 'The Truth' and the TNT guys tagged Shawn Marion with 'The Matrix' but for whatever reason those names failed to stick for extended periods of time. 

Here in MN Kevin Garnett started out 'Da Kid' then became 'Da Man' and now is just KG...Allen Iverson started out as 'The Answer' and now in Turkey is known simply as 'AI'
Kevin Durant burst on to the scene and the guys at NBA TV dubbed him 'Durantuala' which is a fantastic nickname, uses part of his name, and totally describes what he looks like on the floor, arms and legs everywhere.  But it seems more and more people are reverting to calling him 'KD'

Brandon Roy is called 'The Natural' in Portland, which was a great nickname until his knee gave out and now he doesn't look very natural out there...

Lebron James entered the NBA with the moniker 'King James' but do nicknames really count when you give them to yourself?  Shaq could answer that as he gives himself a new nickname every other week.

Looking at the landscape of the NBA right now there are a number of guys who I feel are 'nickname worthy' and think it's a shame we haven't come up with something for them.
Steve Nash, 2-time MVP, most prolific point guard of the last 20 years...needs a nickname.
Jason Kidd, also an amazing, flashy point guard, needs a nickname (and J-Kidd doesn't count)
Kobe...I guess if you are that good and get the 'one name' treatment that might count but its borderline.

LeBron...and may I nominate 'The Decision'...

Deron Williams, again D-Will doesn't count.
Amar'e Stoudemire...now that he's in the Big Apple we gotta come up with something.
And finally Dirk Nowitzki, but again the one name treatment may count here.

(I purposely left Dwight Howard off this list, any time you steal a nickname that is already in use and try to use it as your own, you don't deserve one)

The problem with trying to tag a nickname to the guys on this list is that it may be too late.  They have been around long enough that forcing a nickname on them now wouldn't feel right.
But there is still time for Blake Griffin and Kevin Love; they are young enough that if we got something going now it just may stick for the rest of their careers.

So far we have two nominations for Griffin, Zero G's (my nickname because he operates like there is no gravity) and 'The Blake Show' (from Jonah 'Bold' Ballow of Timberwolves.com)
And for Love (K-Love doesn't count) I nominate 'Love Machine' because he is a rebounding machine, he loves to rebound...it all adds up.

I would encourage you to submit your own nickname ideas to our twitter account @wolvesradio and let's see if we can reverse the nasty trend of initial nicknames and get back to some old school monikers.