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As far as I’m concerned, you haven’t officially made it as an athlete until you’ve gotten yourself a nickname. It can be as something simple as “KD” or something as badass as “Black Mamba,” but if you have your own alternate moniker, there’s a good chance you’ve put in the work to earn it (with the exception of Glen Davis, who was born to have the nickname “Big Baby” even if he’d never played basketball).
While China’s only real notable basketball export is Yao Ming, his arrival to the NBA sparked an uptick in interest in basketball in the country, and over the past couple of decades, it has been importing American players past their rime and developing a base of diehard fans of basketball in China and beyond.
Most foreign names don’t translate very well in Mandarin, and while the media attempts to come up with phonetic pronunciations that are essentially collections of random Chinese words, fans have dreamed up their own nicknames for some of the NBA’s biggest stars. Asian historian Nick Kapur rounded up some of the more notable ones, and some of them are absolutely incredible:
Russell Westbrook – 威少 "Wei Dude"
Russ's phonetic name in Chinese (衛斯特布魯克 wei si te bu lu ke) is really long so they shortened it to "Wei Dude."
They also upgraded the "wei" from "guarding" (衛) to "dominating" (威).
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
However, James and Westbrook have nothing some of their fellow players.
Kobe Bryant – 蜗壳 "Snail Shell"
Kobe is "Snail Shell" because it rhymes with "My [guy] Kobe."
When he was young they called him 小飞侠 or “Peter Pan” (literally "Little Flying Warrior") and at the end he became 唠嗑 (“Chatterbox, Gossip"), which rhymes with "Old Kobe."
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Shaquille O'Neal – 大鲨鱼 "The Giant Shark"
Derives from the fact that the first sound in the Chinese word for "shark" (shayu) sounds like the first sound in "Shaquille."
Toward the end of his career, he was frequently called "O'Fat" (奥胖) – a play on "O'Neal."
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Carmelo Anthony – 甜瓜 "Melon"
Because his English nickname "Melo" sounds like the English word "melon" which they then translated into Chinese (pronounced tian gua).
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Charles Barkley – 飞猪 "The Flying Pig"
Self-explanatory.
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
He lists a few other nicknames in the full thread (which is one of the I’ve seen on Twitter that’s actually worth working your way through), but no one comes close to topping Steph Curry’s most popular nickname: “Fucks The Sky.”
Given Curry's penchant for launching shots into the sky, Chinese netizens apparently felt it would be more apropos to name him "fucks the sky" instead of "fucks the ground," so they replaced "earth" (土) with "sky" (天) in the second character. 2/3
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
I am never calling Steph Curry by his given name again.