Los Angeles Clippers, 2012-13
Tattoo percentage: 67% (10 players with tattoos, 5 without)
The Clippers had a decrease in tattoo percentage from last year.
Players with tattoos:
Matt Barnes
In 2008, Barnes founded the Athletes vs. Cancer foundation in memory of his mother, who passed away from lung cancer. In 2010, he added a portrait of his mother, framed by angel’s wings, to his many tattoos. As he explained to Tom Hoffarth of Inside So Cal, “this keeps her around.”
Chauncey Billups
On Billups’s left shoulder is a tattoo of a crowned figure spinning a basketball on his finger. Surrounding the figure are the words “King of the Hill,” a reference to the Denver neighborhood Billups grew up in. In an IGN Sports interview, Billups described it as his favorite tattoo, and explained the significance: “My neighborhood back home is called Park Hill. It’s a hood thing. All of my tats mean something.”
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe has tattoos along both arms.
Caron Butler
While on the Wizards, Butler wrote on his blog about tattoos: “Like many other guys in the NBA, I’m big on tattoos too. I may not be a league leader there, though, because I have just four of them. The tat that means the most to me is the one on my left arm. It says “Rest in Peace, Kailo”. That’s my cousin who died in a car accident. She was like a sister to me. I grew up with her and although she’s no longer here, I keep her with me.”
Jamal Crawford
Players from Seattle tend to have a lot of tattoos (Nate Robinson, Jason Terry, Terrence Williams) and Crawford is one of the heaviest. On his left shoulder is one of the dreamiest basketball-themed tattoos in the league: against a background of heavenly clouds, a hoop glows, with “Jamal” lettered across the backboard in Olde English.
DeAndre Jordan
Among Jordan’s many tattoos is a portrait of his grandfather on his stomach, added in 2012.
Lamar Odom
When it comes to tattoos, Odom keeps it simple: “My tattoos are just reminders of people who are close to me.”
DaJuan Summers
Summers has both arms well covered, but it’s his first tattoo, acquired in high school, that he looks to for comfort: “‘It has my name on it,’ says his mother, Twana, a supermarket meat cutter who raised her three kids alone in Baltimore after her husband died when DaJuan was just 3. ‘And it has the names of [his sister] Regina and [brother] Malik. He says when things get tight, he grabs that tattoo.’”
Ronny Turiaf
In March of 2011, Turiaf began work on a new tattoo on his left arm: a phoenix rising from ashes.
Maalik Wayns
Wayns has tattoos on both arms. In 2011, he posted to twitter: “God I hope I’m living right and sorry for the tattoos.”
Players without tattoos:
Willie Green
Blake Griffin
Grant Hill
Ryan Hollins
Chris Paul
DeAndre Jordan
Vincent Bonsignore’s recent Whittier Daily News piece about DeAndre Jordan’s friendship with Tobi Oyedeji, a high school basketball star from Jordan’s hometown who died in a car accident on the way home from his senior prom. The article mentions Jordan’s tattoo tribute to Oyedeji:
Prior to every Clippers game Jordan tweets @tobioye…35!!!, he has a tattoo on his arm in Oyedeji’s honor and wears a wristband during every game with Oyedeji’s name on it.
Jordan also has dedicated his entire career to his friend.
Los Angeles Clippers, 2011-12
Tattoo percentage: 87% (13 players with tattoos, 2 without)
Wow. In the past few months (sealing the deal with their last-minute trade today), the Clippers have gone from a team with an average number of tattooed players last year to the team with the most tattooed players by a good margin. Strangely, their two marquee players are their only two players without tattoos.
Players with tattoos:
Chauncey Billups
On Billups’s left shoulder is a tattoo of a crowned figure spinning a basketball on his finger. Surrounding the figure are the words “King of the Hill,” a reference to the Denver neighborhood Billups grew up in. In an IGN Sports interview, Billups described it as his favorite tattoo, and explained the significance: “My neighborhood back home is called Park Hill. It’s a hood thing. All of my tats mean something.”
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe’s right arm is almost completely covered in tattoos.
Caron Butler
While on the Wizards, Butler wrote on his blog about tattoos: “Like many other guys in the NBA, I’m big on tattoos too. I may not be a league leader there, though, because I have just four of them. The tat that means the most to me is the one on my left arm. It says “Rest in Peace, Kailo”. That’s my cousin who died in a car accident. She was like a sister to me. I grew up with her and although she’s no longer here, I keep her with me.”
Reggie Evans
Evans has tattoos along both arms, including his mother’s name—Janie—tattooed along his left forearm.
Randy Foye
One of the most heartbreaking tattoos in the league (or that I’ve heard of, period), Foye has a tattoo of his mother over his heart. Raised by his two grandmothers after his father died and his mother ran out on the family, Foye marked his 22nd birthday with this tribute to his absent parent. A 2006 interview painted yearning, not forgiveness as the inspiration for the design: “If my mom was here today, she would probably be the most important person in my life. I know how I treat my grandmother and I put my grandmother in her place on a pedestal. I just felt as if I needed something of her attached to me, so I just put her over my heart.” Think about that next time you boo him.
Ryan Gomes
Gomes has a massive tattoo of praying hands on his ribcage.
DeAndre Jordan
Jordan has a lot of text tattoos: the serenity prayer; Matthew 5:4-5; G.W.O.M. (which stands for God Watch Over Me); Philippians 4:13; “Don’t take wooden nickels”; and a text he wrote himself on his bicep. According to a Dime Magazine profile, he can’t help it: “I mean I see a lot of writing and things like that, that I can relate to and I’m not like, ‘Oh, I should get it tattooed on me,’ but I just kind of like them so much that I want to get it.”
Travis Leslie
Leslie is the only NBA player I can think of with no upper body tattoos and tattoos on his calves.
Kenyon Martin
In a recent L.A. Times article, Martin discussed the meaning behind one of his tattoos:
“I have another tattoo here that reads: ‘God’s Plan, My will.’ That’s why I work so hard and care so much. Basketball is what got me out of the projects. It got my momma the house she never had, the car she never had.
“Nobody is going to get the best of me. You might score more points than me, but you’re going to know you were in a dogfight.”
Bobby Simmons
Simmons has a tribute to his other brother, Tizoma, who died when Bobby was a junior in high school, tattooed on his right arm. When asked about the tattoo by The Journal Times, Simmons explained, “I think of him all the time. That’s why I had this (tattoo) done. That was the purpose for me getting this, so that he would never be forgotten.”
Trey Thompkins
Thompkins has tattoos on both arms.
Mo Williams
Williams has a tattoo of the Mr. Peanut logo in reference to his childhood nickname, Peanut.
Nick Young
Young prepared for the 2010-11 season by having the word “FAITH” tattooed across his chest, a move he described in an interview: “‘It feels like a new birth. I’m just ready to take on any challenge. I’m trying to get tattoos and coming back totally new — a new Nick,’ Young said, flashing a grin, then flexing to show he has hit the weight room this summer to add another seven pounds of muscle. ‘I can stomach the big dogs this year.’”
Players without tattoos:
Blake Griffin
Chris Paul
Los Angeles Clippers, 2010-11
Tattoo percentage: 57% (8 players with tattoos, 6 without)
I watched a lot of games on my phone this season, which is kind of a weird unsatisfying thing to do. Sometimes the signal wasn’t so strong and the players would pixellate, which would make it feel like I was playing NBA Jam on Game Gear. Most times there wasn’t enough detail to tell the players apart, unless I knew the team’s spacing really well, and could recognize, for example, that Dorell Wright was the only one on the Warriors who would lurk in the corner like that. Not so with the Clippers. From Aminu’s rangy, boneless arms to Jordan crashing under the basket to Griffin’s superhumanity, the Clippers were a bunch of distinctive dudes this year, even on a two by four inch screen. Their tattoo game was not as distinctive, but does reveal some interesting things about their squad.
—
Players with tattoos:
Al-Farouq Aminu
Aminu didn’t make as much noise as people expected this year, missing a lot of easy shots and forcing bad plays. Still, he was a rebounding monster, and when he followed one up with a full-court rush, it was pretty much magic. So how facile that a guy who has only shown flashes of what he really is only has tattoos on the inside of his biceps, showing only glimpses of the designs. Psyched to see what’s next for him.
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe has a tattoo on his right arm that covered his bicep last summer but had extended as far as his wrist by the all-star break.
Randy Foye
One of the most heartbreaking tattoos in the league (or that I’ve heard of, period), Foye has a tattoo of his mother over his heart. Raised by his two grandmothers after his father died and his mother ran out on the family, Foye marked his 22nd birthday with this tribute to his absent parent. A 2006 interview painted yearning, not forgiveness as the inspiration for the design: “If my mom was here today, she would probably be the most important person in my life. I know how I treat my grandmother and I put my grandmother in her place on a pedestal. I just felt as if I needed something of her attached to me, so I just put her over my heart.”
Ryan Gomes
Has a tattoo on his chest that occasionally peeks out of his jersey.
DeAndre Jordan
Jordan covers a lot of ground in his tattoos, from tributes to family members, to hometown pride, to spirituality, to a noble lion. A recent DIME Magazine profile goes through all of his tattoos with commentary. A standout is his left forearm, which shows a half-skull/half-earth sphere surrounded by text. Jordan described the design and elaborated on its meaning: “It says, ‘Don’t gain the world and lose your soul.’ It’s a Bob Marley quote. It’s a circle, but it’s half a skull and half the Earth. I just didn’t want to get caught up in materialistic things and forget who I am and where I come from.”
Jamario Moon
At the end of the 2009-2010 season, Moon responded to fan questions via the Cleveland Cavaliers website. The first asked him what his favorite tattoo was, and he responded that it was the one on his right arm: “My favorite tattoo is my right arm tattoo. It’s a cross with a basketball on top with a dog in the middle. It’s the three things I love the most. I love God, I love basketball and I also love dogs.”
Willie Warren
Warren has two different joker/basketball tattoos. Although they’re thematically close to many NBA tattoos, in a 2009 pre-draft profile, Warren described the meaning embedded in the two designs: “On my right arm, I have a joker with a basketball in the background. The one on my left arm is a joker with a basketball jersey on, No. 32. Me and my mom wore No. 32 in high school, so that was something I got for me and my mom. Of course, I won a state championship and she didn’t.”
Mo Williams
Clearly one of the most tattooed players on the team, Williams and six of his high school friends had “La Familia” tattooed on their legs, representing a deep bond that he explained to Cleveland’s Plain Dealer: “It signifies us as a unit forever. No matter what direction we go in life, we know we’re ‘La Familia.’ We’re together, no matter what happens. That’ll be with me forever.”
Players without tattoos:
Brian Cook
Ike Diogu
Eric Gordon
Blake Griffin
Chris Kaman
Craig Smith
Los Angeles Clippers, 2012-13
Tattoo percentage: 67% (10 players with tattoos, 5 without)
The Clippers had a decrease in tattoo percentage from last year.
Players with tattoos:
Matt Barnes
In 2008, Barnes founded the Athletes vs. Cancer foundation in memory of his mother, who passed away from lung cancer. In 2010, he added a portrait of his mother, framed by angel’s wings, to his many tattoos. As he explained to Tom Hoffarth of Inside So Cal, “this keeps her around.”
Chauncey Billups
On Billups’s left shoulder is a tattoo of a crowned figure spinning a basketball on his finger. Surrounding the figure are the words “King of the Hill,” a reference to the Denver neighborhood Billups grew up in. In an IGN Sports interview, Billups described it as his favorite tattoo, and explained the significance: “My neighborhood back home is called Park Hill. It’s a hood thing. All of my tats mean something.”
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe has tattoos along both arms.
Caron Butler
While on the Wizards, Butler wrote on his blog about tattoos: “Like many other guys in the NBA, I’m big on tattoos too. I may not be a league leader there, though, because I have just four of them. The tat that means the most to me is the one on my left arm. It says “Rest in Peace, Kailo”. That’s my cousin who died in a car accident. She was like a sister to me. I grew up with her and although she’s no longer here, I keep her with me.”
Jamal Crawford
Players from Seattle tend to have a lot of tattoos (Nate Robinson, Jason Terry, Terrence Williams) and Crawford is one of the heaviest. On his left shoulder is one of the dreamiest basketball-themed tattoos in the league: against a background of heavenly clouds, a hoop glows, with “Jamal” lettered across the backboard in Olde English.
DeAndre Jordan
Among Jordan’s many tattoos is a portrait of his grandfather on his stomach, added in 2012.
Lamar Odom
When it comes to tattoos, Odom keeps it simple: “My tattoos are just reminders of people who are close to me.”
DaJuan Summers
Summers has both arms well covered, but it’s his first tattoo, acquired in high school, that he looks to for comfort: “‘It has my name on it,’ says his mother, Twana, a supermarket meat cutter who raised her three kids alone in Baltimore after her husband died when DaJuan was just 3. ‘And it has the names of [his sister] Regina and [brother] Malik. He says when things get tight, he grabs that tattoo.’”
Ronny Turiaf
In March of 2011, Turiaf began work on a new tattoo on his left arm: a phoenix rising from ashes.
Maalik Wayns
Wayns has tattoos on both arms. In 2011, he posted to twitter: “God I hope I’m living right and sorry for the tattoos.”
Players without tattoos:
Willie Green
Blake Griffin
Grant Hill
Ryan Hollins
Chris Paul
DeAndre Jordan
Vincent Bonsignore’s recent Whittier Daily News piece about DeAndre Jordan’s friendship with Tobi Oyedeji, a high school basketball star from Jordan’s hometown who died in a car accident on the way home from his senior prom. The article mentions Jordan’s tattoo tribute to Oyedeji:
Prior to every Clippers game Jordan tweets @tobioye…35!!!, he has a tattoo on his arm in Oyedeji’s honor and wears a wristband during every game with Oyedeji’s name on it.
Jordan also has dedicated his entire career to his friend.
Los Angeles Clippers, 2011-12
Tattoo percentage: 87% (13 players with tattoos, 2 without)
Wow. In the past few months (sealing the deal with their last-minute trade today), the Clippers have gone from a team with an average number of tattooed players last year to the team with the most tattooed players by a good margin. Strangely, their two marquee players are their only two players without tattoos.
Players with tattoos:
Chauncey Billups
On Billups’s left shoulder is a tattoo of a crowned figure spinning a basketball on his finger. Surrounding the figure are the words “King of the Hill,” a reference to the Denver neighborhood Billups grew up in. In an IGN Sports interview, Billups described it as his favorite tattoo, and explained the significance: “My neighborhood back home is called Park Hill. It’s a hood thing. All of my tats mean something.”
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe’s right arm is almost completely covered in tattoos.
Caron Butler
While on the Wizards, Butler wrote on his blog about tattoos: “Like many other guys in the NBA, I’m big on tattoos too. I may not be a league leader there, though, because I have just four of them. The tat that means the most to me is the one on my left arm. It says “Rest in Peace, Kailo”. That’s my cousin who died in a car accident. She was like a sister to me. I grew up with her and although she’s no longer here, I keep her with me.”
Reggie Evans
Evans has tattoos along both arms, including his mother’s name—Janie—tattooed along his left forearm.
Randy Foye
One of the most heartbreaking tattoos in the league (or that I’ve heard of, period), Foye has a tattoo of his mother over his heart. Raised by his two grandmothers after his father died and his mother ran out on the family, Foye marked his 22nd birthday with this tribute to his absent parent. A 2006 interview painted yearning, not forgiveness as the inspiration for the design: “If my mom was here today, she would probably be the most important person in my life. I know how I treat my grandmother and I put my grandmother in her place on a pedestal. I just felt as if I needed something of her attached to me, so I just put her over my heart.” Think about that next time you boo him.
Ryan Gomes
Gomes has a massive tattoo of praying hands on his ribcage.
DeAndre Jordan
Jordan has a lot of text tattoos: the serenity prayer; Matthew 5:4-5; G.W.O.M. (which stands for God Watch Over Me); Philippians 4:13; “Don’t take wooden nickels”; and a text he wrote himself on his bicep. According to a Dime Magazine profile, he can’t help it: “I mean I see a lot of writing and things like that, that I can relate to and I’m not like, ‘Oh, I should get it tattooed on me,’ but I just kind of like them so much that I want to get it.”
Travis Leslie
Leslie is the only NBA player I can think of with no upper body tattoos and tattoos on his calves.
Kenyon Martin
In a recent L.A. Times article, Martin discussed the meaning behind one of his tattoos:
“I have another tattoo here that reads: ‘God’s Plan, My will.’ That’s why I work so hard and care so much. Basketball is what got me out of the projects. It got my momma the house she never had, the car she never had.
“Nobody is going to get the best of me. You might score more points than me, but you’re going to know you were in a dogfight.”
Bobby Simmons
Simmons has a tribute to his other brother, Tizoma, who died when Bobby was a junior in high school, tattooed on his right arm. When asked about the tattoo by The Journal Times, Simmons explained, “I think of him all the time. That’s why I had this (tattoo) done. That was the purpose for me getting this, so that he would never be forgotten.”
Trey Thompkins
Thompkins has tattoos on both arms.
Mo Williams
Williams has a tattoo of the Mr. Peanut logo in reference to his childhood nickname, Peanut.
Nick Young
Young prepared for the 2010-11 season by having the word “FAITH” tattooed across his chest, a move he described in an interview: “‘It feels like a new birth. I’m just ready to take on any challenge. I’m trying to get tattoos and coming back totally new — a new Nick,’ Young said, flashing a grin, then flexing to show he has hit the weight room this summer to add another seven pounds of muscle. ‘I can stomach the big dogs this year.’”
Players without tattoos:
Blake Griffin
Chris Paul
Los Angeles Clippers, 2010-11
Tattoo percentage: 57% (8 players with tattoos, 6 without)
I watched a lot of games on my phone this season, which is kind of a weird unsatisfying thing to do. Sometimes the signal wasn’t so strong and the players would pixellate, which would make it feel like I was playing NBA Jam on Game Gear. Most times there wasn’t enough detail to tell the players apart, unless I knew the team’s spacing really well, and could recognize, for example, that Dorell Wright was the only one on the Warriors who would lurk in the corner like that. Not so with the Clippers. From Aminu’s rangy, boneless arms to Jordan crashing under the basket to Griffin’s superhumanity, the Clippers were a bunch of distinctive dudes this year, even on a two by four inch screen. Their tattoo game was not as distinctive, but does reveal some interesting things about their squad.
—
Players with tattoos:
Al-Farouq Aminu
Aminu didn’t make as much noise as people expected this year, missing a lot of easy shots and forcing bad plays. Still, he was a rebounding monster, and when he followed one up with a full-court rush, it was pretty much magic. So how facile that a guy who has only shown flashes of what he really is only has tattoos on the inside of his biceps, showing only glimpses of the designs. Psyched to see what’s next for him.
Eric Bledsoe
Bledsoe has a tattoo on his right arm that covered his bicep last summer but had extended as far as his wrist by the all-star break.
Randy Foye
One of the most heartbreaking tattoos in the league (or that I’ve heard of, period), Foye has a tattoo of his mother over his heart. Raised by his two grandmothers after his father died and his mother ran out on the family, Foye marked his 22nd birthday with this tribute to his absent parent. A 2006 interview painted yearning, not forgiveness as the inspiration for the design: “If my mom was here today, she would probably be the most important person in my life. I know how I treat my grandmother and I put my grandmother in her place on a pedestal. I just felt as if I needed something of her attached to me, so I just put her over my heart.”
Ryan Gomes
Has a tattoo on his chest that occasionally peeks out of his jersey.
DeAndre Jordan
Jordan covers a lot of ground in his tattoos, from tributes to family members, to hometown pride, to spirituality, to a noble lion. A recent DIME Magazine profile goes through all of his tattoos with commentary. A standout is his left forearm, which shows a half-skull/half-earth sphere surrounded by text. Jordan described the design and elaborated on its meaning: “It says, ‘Don’t gain the world and lose your soul.’ It’s a Bob Marley quote. It’s a circle, but it’s half a skull and half the Earth. I just didn’t want to get caught up in materialistic things and forget who I am and where I come from.”
Jamario Moon
At the end of the 2009-2010 season, Moon responded to fan questions via the Cleveland Cavaliers website. The first asked him what his favorite tattoo was, and he responded that it was the one on his right arm: “My favorite tattoo is my right arm tattoo. It’s a cross with a basketball on top with a dog in the middle. It’s the three things I love the most. I love God, I love basketball and I also love dogs.”
Willie Warren
Warren has two different joker/basketball tattoos. Although they’re thematically close to many NBA tattoos, in a 2009 pre-draft profile, Warren described the meaning embedded in the two designs: “On my right arm, I have a joker with a basketball in the background. The one on my left arm is a joker with a basketball jersey on, No. 32. Me and my mom wore No. 32 in high school, so that was something I got for me and my mom. Of course, I won a state championship and she didn’t.”
Mo Williams
Clearly one of the most tattooed players on the team, Williams and six of his high school friends had “La Familia” tattooed on their legs, representing a deep bond that he explained to Cleveland’s Plain Dealer: “It signifies us as a unit forever. No matter what direction we go in life, we know we’re ‘La Familia.’ We’re together, no matter what happens. That’ll be with me forever.”
Players without tattoos:
Brian Cook
Ike Diogu
Eric Gordon
Blake Griffin
Chris Kaman
Craig Smith
