WHAT’S IN A NICKNAME?
ASK THE NCAA’S SPEEDY, SCOOCHIE OR TUBBY
The history of basketball has always been colourfully inter woven with imaginative nicknames — monikers that could instantly summon wonder ( Magic), prompt a smile (Pickles) or trigger a craving (Jellybean).
For the most part, nicknames have disappeared from basketball, replaced by tired initials (LBJ, CP3, KD), corporate shorthand ( Melo) or nothing at all ( Stephen Curry). New York Knicks fans tried to label the rookie sensation Kristaps Porzingis with a cool alias, but none took.
That is why this year’s NCAA Tournament seems more like a throwback, a nod to the days when nicknames were vibrant and organic, borne of playground taunts, backyard boasts or, worse, the nursery, from which many of the more unfortunate nicknames emerged. This year, the tournament offers a symphony that should please fans and onomasticians alike.
Dayton’s Dayshon Smith, better known as Scoochie, is a Bronx native stirring memories of when nicknames consistently rolled off the tongue, even if it was never clear how they got there in the first place. S mith, l i ke many, has claimed ignorance regarding the origin of his nickname, blaming his grandfather for turning baby babble into a lasting sobriquet.
At least the name Scoochie is unique. When his Flyers face Syracuse Friday, Smith will be reunited with an assistant coach who once recruited him, Adrian Autry, who is said to have acquired the nickname Red because of his hair colour, despite its having already been claimed by notable coaches like Red Auerbach and Red Holzman.
Pete Gillen, a Brooklyn native and former coach at Xavier, Providence and Virginia, caught himself daydreaming when he brought up Smith’s name on CBS late Sunday night, chuckling quietly as he reminisced about the names from the playgrounds of his youth.
“Batman, Bullhead, Sid, Shorty,” Gillen said, listing a few of his favourites in a phone interview Monday. “Joey Roastbeef. Joey Clams. Three- Finger Willie was pretty good.”
Gillen added, “And, of course, there was Slice.”
Yes, of course, Slice ( legal name: Barry Rohrssen), now t he associate head coach at St. John’s, whose campus lies not far from the gym at St. Francis College, where his nickname was bestowed at a Five- Star basketball camp by one of its founders, Howard Garfinkel. Rohrssen had not been a great shooter; he preferred cutting to the hoop. So Slice became his handle well before there was Twitter.
“The really good names stay alive,” said Tom Kon- chalski, a longtime scout and the editor and publisher of High School Basketball Illustrated.
Indeed, some names are hard to shake. Texas Tech coach Orlando Smith will forever be known in basketball circles as Tubby, though he has always remained relatively trim ( the nickname was given because Smith adored bathing in a washtub as a toddler). Smith’s assistant Alvin Williamson still answers to Pooh because his aunt thought he resembled Winnie the Pooh.
“Nobody knows my first name,” said Speedy Claxton, an assistant coach at Hofstra, who got his well- known nickname from a coach in an eighth- grade AAU game. Now, Claxton said, he cannot go through an airport without a TSA agent asking why his passport reads Craig.
“Sometimes t he NBA would make my check out to Speedy,” Claxton said, adding, “That’s how you know you have a real nickname — when people don’t realize you have a first name.”