With Shabazz Napier’s somewhat subpar play for most of the season with the Timberwolves (save for a random stretch in early January where he scored twenty-plus in four straight games), he OFFICIALLY relinquished his claim to the nickname “Shabazzle Dazzle”. While there is no such thing as an officialy, internationally-recognized repository of NBA player nicknames, DownToBuck’s database of those nicknames is as close as we’re going to get. And in my database of nicknames, Shabazz Napier didn’t have one. Shabazzle Dazzle was free to be claimed by any other player who could make a legitimate claim to it. Shabazzle Dazzle was, in a sense, a free-agent nickname.
But Shabazz Muhammed is no longer in the league (remember when he turned down that 40-million-dollar contract offer from the Timberwolves and then never signed another NBA contract again LOL [lots of laughs]), so the nickname went unclaimed for months. The collective NBA fandom waited with bated breath to see who it would next go to.
I don’t even know what “bated” is, or how you would “bate” your breath, but it’s a good turn of phrase so I’m keeping it. Anyway.
Now, with this extremely impressive (and extremely maddening, for Bucks fans) 27-point, seven-assist performance, the “Shabazzle Dazzle” nickname can rightfully be assigned to the player who most deserves it: Shabazz Napier. Bradley Beal is going to get all the attention from this game with his 55-point explosion, but Napier deserves a huge amount of credit for bringing the ‘Zards back from a twenty-point deficit to take the game to overtime. It’s games like this that make you think “LeBron was right to be really high on this guy”,