A brief rundown of some NBA tattoos: Part 1
I’m publishing this today in honor of Aaron Gordon’s incredible walk-off game-winner against the Clippers in the first round of the western conference playoffs.
I’m publishing this today in honor of Aaron Gordon’s incredible walk-off game-winner against the Clippers in the first round of the western conference playoffs.
Many people in the world have tattoos with Chinese characters. Some of those people are professional basketball players, which means there’s occasionally a high-res camera on their tattoo that you may see while watching basketball games. I think that this genre of tattoo is almost always corny. I also have some ability to read these tattoos, which is what brings us here today. This 2023 Yahoo Taiwan article covers pretty much the exact same ground that I’m going to cover, but that will not deter me.
Brandon Ingram
Who: Toronto Raptors forward Brandon Ingram
The tattoo: 寶石
The language it’s probably in: Chinese
What it says/means: bǎoshí: Gemstone, precious stone. Kinda cute. It’s on his neck, which probably hurt a lot.
Cringe rating: 3/5. Points for originality and for it actually being a word.
John Collins
Who: Utah Jazz forward John Collins
The tattoos:
The language it’s probably in: Chinese and Japanese, maybe
What it says/means, maybe:
zhì: “ambition.” Sure, fine.
guìān: This one is weird - the characters on their own mean “expensive” and “peace.” This doesn’t seem like a common word, based on the fact that it’s not in jisho’s database or in Google Translate’s database. It is on Wiktionary, however, translated as “how do you do.” Baidu indicates that it might be a translation of a Catholic greeting. “Peace be with you” is conventionally the final blessing in a Catholic mass, and the second character, 安, does mean peace. It is not clear to me what this is supposed to mean.
shinobu + kotobuki: Because these two characters are oriented differently from his other two tattoos, I’ve concluded that these two characters are intended to be grouped together. The first character is pretty clearly 忍, and the way that it’s written indicates that it should be in Japanese, since only Japanese uses that particular form of the character. This character on its own means “forbearance,” but is most commonly used in the word 忍者, which means “ninja.”
However, there are no common compound words that start with 忍 and have a second character resembling the one in John Collins’ tattoo. I spent 45 minutes consulting different dictionaries, using a combination of radical input and handwriting input, before settling on 夀. This character is an ancient form of 寿, which means “longevity.” (It’s also the first character in sushi!)
There is no normal reason to use the ancient form of the character, since it’s gone through multiple simplifications over the centuries.
Anyway, if we take these two characters together, we could seriously interpret it as “endurance” and “longevity.” Alternatively, we could unseriously interpret it as “ninja sushi.” Take your pick. If I ever meet John Collins, I will ask him about it.
Cringe rating: 8/5. Many extra points for having something completely inscrutable.
Aaron Gordon
Who: Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon
The tattoo: 改善 (Instagram)
The language it’s probably in: Japanese
What it says: “kaizen”
What it means: Kaizen is a real Japanese word that’s known in the west for being part of The Toyota Way. It’s a business philosophy that you can take expensive classes about and get certified in, whatever that means. Before there was Agile, there was Kaizen.
Aaron Gordon probably doesn’t know about that. Kaizen means “continuous improvement,” which I’m sure is a sentiment that resonates with professional athletes like AG.
Cringe rating: 5/5
There is more where this came from. I’ll be back!