YAYsports! NBA

With the World Championships going on, there’s all kinds of LeBron news around from all over the place.

For example, he’s gotten two new tattoos this summer. (Scroll to the bottom of that linkage to read about them.)

What continues to be the most interesting stuff to us is LBJ’s billionaire aspirations, and the need/want/requirement to conquer Asia to do so.

What’s cool about his is the “new frontier” aspect of it. We’ve long said one of the reasons there can never truly be another Michael Jordan is because of all the endorsement advances he made off the court.

The man basically invented the marketing of the modern athlete - even if someone matches him basketball-wise, there’s no way to “be the first” in those other areas again.

That said, conquering Asia (not literally, although that would be interesting, as well) is one way for LeBron to attempt to make a similar impact. It seems he’s channeling his way in, too. Note this Chinese blog’s desire to find LeBron a suitable Chinese name.

Now, we know that many Chinese call LeBron 小皇帝 (Xiao Huang Di or “Little Emperor”), but that’s just a nickname.

We’ve asked around and got some options. Here’s what we have so far:

* 乐伯朗 (Le Bo Lang, sounds like “LeBron”)
* 乐布朗 (Le Bu Lang, also sounds like “LeBron”)
* 勒伯朗 (Le Bo Lang, another one that sounds like “LeBron”)
* 勒布朗 (Le Bu Lang, you guessed it — sounds like “LeBron”)
* 金搏浪 (Jin Bo Lang or “Golden Wave Fighter”)
* 金詹士 (Jin Zhan Shi, kind of sounds like “King James”)
* 金战士 (Jin Zhan Shi or “Golden Warrior”, also kind of sounds like “King James”)
* 张磊 (Zhang Lei, if we want him to have a common name)

We’ll debate to the day we die that “Le Bo Lang” sounds nothing like “LeBron”, and that goes for “Le Bu Lang”, and “Le Bo Lang” again, and also “Le Bu Lang” once more.

It’s at this point we forfeit, and admit we don’t actually know Chinese. We remain impressed that our blogging software is with the Chinese symbols, though.

Anyway, our pick is Jin Bo Lang, which means “Golden Wave Fighter”, which descends from an ancient Chinese legend about doing battle with large ocean ripples of 10 feet or more, which were known to be a brownish/yellow glowy color.

That just leaves the question of what our Chinese name should be. We spent much of the evening and morning researching this, and we’ve chosen to go with “Rice”.