I miss the days when people actually watched their game then they earned a nickname tied to their performance. The Mailman always delivers. John Stockton needed no nickname as he defined his very position. Ricky Green the Fastest of them All. Magic Johnson. Simply MJ covered it. The Glove, Gary Payton.
Now it is like every kid in high school dreaming of what his nickname should be once he is a *gasp* STAR!! It reeks of all these women as they age setting up what their "grandma" name will be. Well, I want to be Granny, but I want to be Grand-mama, well, call me Oma, call me Mee-maw. It's stupid.
Let the kids play and see if a nickname even makes sense or sticks. But really most nicknames now are about the gram. Initials + number are better and easier than their actual name, so that is usually what sticks. AK47 looks better in a tweet than Andre Kirilenko. Of course, AK47 s about the only initial+number nickname that actually fit the person and made sense on multiple levels anyway. All of the rest of them were just initials and a number with no meaning at all. And even the high school attempts at nicknames are largely stupid. Donovan "Spidah" Mitchell? That's dumb, has nothing to do with basketball, or his game, but probably sounded hella cool (like that phrase did) in jr high.
So I say let them play and see if they can earn a nickname. Like Memo "Money" Okur. Otherwise just pick what makes it easier to type and we can stick with that going forward.