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"FacebookPinterestGetty Images\n\nOne day back in college, I was riding in my good friend and teammate Kirk Hinrich's car. I didn't think he was watching me\u2014I forgot that guards have great peripheral vision\u2014and he caught me picking my nose. (Oh please. Don't act like you've never picked your nose.) So Kirk started calling me \"Booger.\" To this day, Kirk and some of my other friends call me \"Boog\" from time to time. I think Kirk wanted revenge because when he first got to Kansas, one of our assistant coaches constantly called him \"Curt\" instead of \"Kirk.\" He hated it, so naturally we started calling him \"Curtis,\" with a heavy accent on the second syllable. It was more like \"Cur-TUSSS.\" Eventually this was shortened to \"Tuss,\" and it has stuck for more than a decade.\n\nNicknames among basketball teammates are very common. It's probably because we spend so much time together and because, in general, basketball players are clowns. We like to make each other laugh and have fun. We talk shit and give each other a hard time. It's just what we do.\n\nI get really into the nickname game and do my best to come up with names for everyone. Some guys already have nicknames they bring with them, earned years earlier in high school or college. Some get a new nickname when they join a team. Some names stick, some don't. Nearly every guy on our team has some sort of nickname. Some are recognized by everyone. Some are names I've attempted to coin but, for whatever reason, never got any traction. For instance, I tried to get people to call Serge Ibaka \"Chewy,\" as in \"Chewbacca\" from Star Wars. That would be an incredible nickname for a basketball player. Can you imagine if a player named after Chewbacca could imitate his scream after a blocked shot or a dunk? Or what if that sound were played over the PA system each time? For whatever reason, it didn't really stick, and people mostly just call him Serge. Lame, right?\n\nSome names stick even though the origin doesn't really make sense. For example, some guys call me \"Los.\" This comes from our center Kendrick Perkins, who found out my full first name is Nicholas and tried to tag me as \"Las\" (because of the last syllable from \"Nicholas\"). He quickly realized this was pretty weak, and he switched it to \"Los\" because he liked it better. I think this has stuck because \"Los\" is usually short for Carlos, and my name is not Carlos, which makes no sense, which means it makes perfect sense.\n\nGoing through the rest of the Thunder, there are plenty of nicknames:\n\nKendrick Perkins is the self proclaimed \"Yung Hawg.\" As soon as he arrived, he made sure everyone knew we were expected to refer to him as \"Yung Hawg,\" and we have obliged. I think the name fits him well, as it gives you a good idea of how he plays. And the \"Yung Hawg\" persona actually has yielded offspring: Perk has taken our assistant equipment manager, Wilson Taylor, under his wing and so now Wilson is known as \"Lil Hawg.\"\n\nAmong the bigs, rookie Ryan Reid is now known as \"Piglet.\" Maybe someday he will achieve Hawg status if he learns to set monster screens, take hard fouls, and mean mug referees the way Yung Hawg does. To the rest of the team, Ryan is known as \"Rupert\" or \"Rupe,\" because Rupert is his middle name and Rupert is a tremendous name.\n\nRoyal Ivey is \"Cheese.\" As Vincent Vega explains in Pulp Fiction a quarter-pounder in Paris is called a Royale With Cheese. That's where the name \"Cheese\" comes from.\n\nEric Maynor is mostly referred to as \"E\" but I call him \"Sleazy-E.\" This is adaptated from the rapper Eazy-E. Maynor isn't sleazy, but I just like calling him \"Sleazy-E.\" Going with just Eazy-E is too eazy.\n\nEveryone pretty much calls Russell Westbrook \"Russ,\" but I'm trying to get \"Russheed Wallace\" to stick since he has been getting a lot of technical fouls this year.\n\nThabo Sefolosha doesn't really have a nickname, although sometimes in practice, when we run through our offensive sets against no defense and he takes a shot, it's fun to call him \"Selfishlosha.\" It's funny in an ironic way because he is one of our most unselfish players.\n\nI am pretty proud to have given Cole Aldrich the nickname \"Cole Sore.\" It's one of my all-time bests. It's just a play on words, but it gets a good reaction.\n\nI call Reggie Jackson \"October.\" That comes from the baseball player Reggie Jackson's \"Mr. October\" nickname. He also has been called \"Better Basketball\" after the \"Better Basketball\" instructional videos that are always advertised on NBA TV. He has this name because he is always doing ball-handling drills before practice with one of the coaches.\n\nIt's pretty obvious that we would call Lazar Hayward \"Laser\" or \"Laser Tag.\" He is also known as \"Zar-Zar Binks\" like Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars.\n\nI call James Harden \"Jimbo Slice\" because he has the Kimbo Slice beard. Daequan Cook and Kevin Durant are pretty much identified by their initials DC and KD. I've been calling Kevin \"Slim\" since he got drafted, because he is very slim. I think the media have given him the nickname \"Durantula,\" which is pretty cool for him, but we don't call him that.\n\nFinally, Nazr Mohammed is mostly called \"Naz.\" At age 34, he is the oldest player on the team, so he does have a few age-related nicknames that have come and gone. I really try to push the age stuff with Naz because I am 31 and I'm starting to feel self-conscious about my age, so it makes me feel better to make fun of him. I used to call him Ol' Man River, but now we like ODB. I'm also thinking about calling him \"Blue,\" like the super old guy in Old School. \"You're my boy, Blue!!\"\n\nCollison, 31, a power forward for the Oklahoma City Thunder, will be guest-blogging for GQ throughout the 2011-2012 NBA season. Click here to follow Nick on Twitter, @nickcollison4. To read all of Nick's previous blog entries, click here."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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