Jeremy Lin and the Least Intimidating Players in the NBA

Thanks to the recent exploits of Jeremy Lin, the new savior for the New York Knicks, it's time to take a look at the least intimidating players in the NBA. 

These are the players who you wouldn't expect to find dribbling a basketball up and down the hardcourt to make their living. These are the guys who look like they should be waterboys instead of players. 

Earlier in the season, Ivan Johnson, a rookie for the Atlanta Hawks, uttered the following magnificent, Shaq/Chuck-worthy quote just a few days into his NBA career:

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“My thing is, I don’t really watch basketball, so I don’t know who anybody is. So when I match up against them, they are a regular player. I know the major players like LeBron [James], Kobe [Bryant], [Dwyane] Wade, but all the extra ones I don’t know. Even if I did know them, I’m not going to be afraid. We are playing basketball.”

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Moving on from the awesomeness of that quote and the fact that a 27-year-old rookie who has a diamond grill and was banned from playing basketball in South Korea said these things, this is the criteria that we're going to use to determine the NBA's least intimidating players. 

If you, like Ivan Johnson, didn't watch basketball and didn't know anything about the players, who would you not be scared of? 

Matt Bonner

Matt Bonner is the first player I'm mentioning because his last name falls before the other seven players' last names alphabetically. But if I'd decided to rank these from least intimidating to most intimidating, The Red Rocket may very well have found himself in the exact same spot. 

I'm not sure exactly what Bonner looks like he should be doing with his life, but it's certainly not playing in the NBA, as he's done ever since 2003. 

Maybe it's the red hair. Maybe it's the full beard. Maybe it's the fact that he looks like a man that half of the kids in any college fraternity could grow up to be, and in this case I mean grow up in both the maturing sense and the literal growing vertically sense. 

Whatever it is, Bonner is by no means intimidating. 

Stephen Curry

Note: If you haven't seen Face/Off, an entertaining and strange movie from 1997 starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, be warned that this slide contains a major spoiler.

Stephen Curry doesn't look old enough to play basketball in the NBA. Hell, Curry still doesn't look like he's ready for his freshman year at Davidson.

I'm convinced that Curry saw a 12-year-old boy one day, walked up to his parents and said, "I want to take his face...off." Then he used his parent's money to employ the revolutionary medical technique that both Castor Troy and Sean Archer use in the movie.

And then for good measure, to make it look less suspicious, he got a little bit of facial hair from Party City and stuck it on his face.

Isn't that the only explanation for this?  

If Steph decides to run his open palm and fingers along the face of a teammate in a downward motion, I'm going to be really freaked out. 

Kevin Durant

Kevin Durant's inclusion on this list is all relative. Ivan Johnson would certainly freak out if he had to guard Durant. But that said, Durant doesn't look like he should be a top-three player in the world of basketball. 

Remember, this is the same guy who couldn't bench press the minimum 180 pounds even once at the draft combine before he was selected at No. 2 behind Greg Oden. 

Durant just looks like a very tall, very athletic human being. His arms seem too long and he's way too skinny to seem like a tough, elite basketball player. 

Plus, he wears backpacks during press conferences. 

Gordon Hayward

This may be the least intimidating picture of an NBA player on the court that I've ever seen. Seriously though, let's have a caption contest here: What in the world is Gordon Hayward doing? The best response will be edited into the article. 

Hayward still doesn't look like he's aged at all since he nearly led Butler to a national title against the Duke Blue Devils. 

He may be tall and lanky, but this small forward is someone I feel like I'd see on my middle school basketball team and not on the Utah Jazz. 

Jeremy Lin

An NBA player who is told that he's going to have to guard an undrafted first-year starting point guard is going to laugh and assume that he'll have an easy night. At this point, he's at the "haha" stage.  

When he learns that the player was cut by multiple teams and was almost cut by the team that he's starting for, he moves on to the "LOL" stage. 

When he learns that the point guard has a degree from Harvard, he moves on to the "LMAO" stage. 

When he sees Jeremy Lin step onto the court and takes note of his youthful enthusiasm, boyish smile and haircut that is worn by no other player in the NBA, he finishes up at the "ROFLMFAO" stage. 

Steve Novak

Let's imagine that you were going out to a park to play a pickup game of three-on-three with your buddies and you found yourself one man short. All of a sudden, Steve Novak walks up and asks to join in, but you have no idea who he is. 

There isn't enough time for any sort of warmup, so you immediately delve right into the process of selecting teams. 

Despite the fact that Novak is good enough to play in the NBA, you, completely ignorant of who he is, probably wouldn't take him with the first pick of the draft. Assuming of course that your friends are all also around 6'10". 

Novak doesn't look like someone who could make a name for himself by draining threes for the New York Knicks. He looks like someone who puts on a suit and goes off to his white-collar job five days a week before coming home to his middle-aged wife and two kids. 

Nate Robinson

Do you see how tiny Nate Robinson looks when he's sandwiched in between Chris Paul (who's not even that big himself) and Reggie Evans? 

Robinson, a three-time Slam Dunk Contest winner, is listed at 5'9"—and that may be a generous listing. I'm 5'11", so when I feel like I'd be towering over an NBA player, they're going to find themselves on this list.

The only other player in the NBA who nears the diminutive stature of Robinson is the Sacramento Kings' Isaiah Thomas. But he doesn't make this list because anytime I hear the name Isaiah Thomas, whether it's spelled the same or not, I think of Zeke and I get scared.  

Kemba Walker

Kemba Walker just seems like a guy you'd want to be friends with. 

Much like Nate Robinson, he isn't exactly one of the tallest players in the NBA, but unlike Robinson, his face is almost always filled with an ear-to-ear smile. Walker just seems to really enjoy the game of basketball and isn't afraid to let it show. 

The rookie point guard's intimidation status goes down a little bit because it's hard to remember that he actually belongs in the NBA until you see him in action, blowing by a defender on his way to a crazy finish around the rim.