Here’s the photorealistic tattoo of sweaty James Harden you wanted
The last time I saw someone get a tattoo of James Harden’s face, I was like, “This is pretty cool, but it’d be even cooler if it was photorealistic to the point where you could see the sweat rolling down Harden’s face and wonder if it was really rolling down the dude’s leg.” Well, good news, rap dudes: NBA tattoo life just got even cooler.
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That leg you see belongs to a New Zealander named Dylan Kake, who’s now the proud owner of a stenciled full-color reproduction of a picture of a hard-at-work James Harden that tattoo artist Steve Butcher of Ship Shape Tattoo in Auckland, New Zealand, said took six hours to bring to life. A pittance of an investment, really, when you think about the lifetime of joy ahead of everyone who will be walking behind your man Dylan and getting reminded of how great things went for the Houston Rockets in the 2014-15 season, and how not great they’ve gone this year.
Amazingly, Harden is only the third high-scoring shooting guard to get inked up on a dude’s calves in the last year; who among us can forget the gentleman/scholar who got Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan tattooed facing each other on his calves last summer? The good news is that Dylan’s still got one free calf to work with. Personally, I’d get Dwight Howard on there, so that when you flex your calves, you get a dramatic reenactment of the beef that’s allegedly been broiling in the Rockets’ locker room for the last couple of years. It’s always good to keep some creative tension in your calves; just ask my best friend, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
There is, of course, a chance that in the years to come, Mr. Kake’s fandom will abate, and he will begin to regret the decision to spend money and time getting the face of an undeniably gifted but defensively flighty guard on his leg. I pray that day never come, but Dylan, if it does, I hope you’ll take solace in the fact that you can always wear long pants, and that you didn’t get a team logo tattooed on your face or J.R. Smith’s throat tattoo on your own throat. At least there’s that.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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