Friday, February 4, 2011

The Four Point Play: The NBA Nomenclature Edition

What better way to transfer the Rucker Park tradition of naming a player by his tendencies than to give the NBA's lesser-knowns the royal treatment. Typically, aliases come from on-court specialties or demeanor. But all the coolest nicknames come from qualities that could never be expressed in a basketball game alone. Rather than rewarding only star players whose signature moves easily birth an AKA, we, The Four Point Play, convene to issue names for the overlooked, underpaid players who make the league a wonderful place. Word to Kevin Love.

Rookie Gordon Hayward wishes he could leave the Draconian Jerry Sloan regime. Since his days at Butler, he's been pigeonholed as systematic, and that's the problem. What happened to just playing for fun, he wonders. The spirit of Spicoli is strong in him.