19 year old Yaroslav Korolev had by far his best game in a Clipper uniform in Friday night's exhibition loss to the Warriors. During the middle game of a back-to-back-to-back stretch, while Dunleavy was resting ALL of his starters and most of the key reserves as well, Korolev started at the 2, played 38 minutes, shot 10-18 overall and 5-8 on his 3's, and finished with 25 points. This is significantly better than he's ever looked, whether in garbage time of games or in summer league, and it is certainly a very encouraging effort from the teenager. He needs to be able to break into the rotation by next season, as the Clippers will have to exercise options to keep him around after that.
But I was thinking, the kid needs a nickname. We can't keep calling him Yaroslav Korolev, or even Yuri. With uniform number nicknames en vogue (Andrei Kirilenko is AK47, Chris Paul is CP3, Kobe was KB8 - not sure if he'll be KB24, which doesn't flow as well), I was thinking we could get him to switch to uniform number 2 and he could be 'Y2K'. Whaddya think? Of course, Tim Thomas is probably not going to give up number 2 to a 19 year old. We could always go with 'Y8K'.
Any other suggestions? What should Korolev's nickname be?