Long-term, or even short-term, subscribers to my channel will know that I am obsessed with creating nicknames for players. If a player doesn’t have a nickname, or I deem their current nickname to be inadequate for whatever reason, I don’t rest until a new nickname is created.
“Lithuanian Lightning” is a decent nickname for Valanciunas, but it doesn’t quite fit because there’s nothing “lightning” about his game. He’s not fast. You could call him “The Lithuanian Lumberer” because of the way he lumbers around the court, but that would be mean. I save the mean nicknames for players who I hold a personal dislike for.
While brainstorming, I came up with “Flying V” as a possible alternative. The Flying V is a style of guitar that looks really cool when you’re playing fast solos on it. No rock or metal band is complete without at least one dude on stage with a Flying V. That kind of cultural reference combined with the “flying” concept would be a perfect nickname, except for one thing:
Valanciunas doesn’t fly. At all.
Sure, Valanciunas is capable of some nice dunks, but he’s never going to go way up in the air to catch an alley-oop. In fact, I don’t know if he’s EVER caught an alley-oop. If he has, I don’t remember it. Way, way back in DTB history, I made a Jonas Valanciunas dunkilation, but it was so embarrassingly boring that I still feel bad about uploading it to this day, six years later. If he wasn’t flying then, he’s definitely not flying now.
So, in the end, we’re sticking with “Lithuanian Lightning” for now, but I’m not happy about it.