“King James” will be coming soon to a jersey near you.
LeBron James is one of the players who will get a custom-made jersey with his nickname in place of his last name when the Miami Heat face the Brooklyn Nets on Jan. 10. It’s clearly a marketing ploy to sell jerseys, but it’s also reminiscent of the way the ABA used to replace the names of their more popular players with their nicknames.
So that’s sort of cool.
Then again, there’s a big difference between “Pistol” or “Truth” emblazoned on the backs of jerseys for Pete Maravich or Paul Pierce, respectively, and backup point guard Norris Cole getting a specially made shirt with “Cole Train,” which nobody called him before and hopefully nobody will ever call him in the future.
There are legendary nicknames, and then there are dumb Twitter handle-sounding nicknames that probably were made up on the fly.
Anyway, check out some of the Heat and Nets’ new threads in the tweets below.
[tweet https://twitter.com/SLAMonline/statuses/418817684327768064 align=’center’]
[tweet https://twitter.com/SLAMonline/statuses/418819171762200576 align=’center’]
