It doesn’t get any lamer than this. Oklahoma City announced today that their new NBA team will be called the Thunder. Chalk up another incredibly lame team name to the NBA. Believe it or not, some of the other finalists included “Energy” and “Wind.” Is there a shaman on the OKC’s marketing firm payroll?

Although the NBA doesn’t have the monopoly on weak nicknames (yeah, I’m looking at you TB Lightning), they do seem to have more than their fair share. Consider the Lakers, who should have left the name in Minneapolis when the franchise moved. Plenty of lakes in Minnesota, not so much in Southern California. In fact, a more apt name for L.A. would have been Puddles of Urine. Have you been to Hollywood Blvd?

Staying in the Western Conference, we have the Utah Jazz. I’m just glad Louis Armstrong wasn’t alive to see this abomination. Utah is to Jazz what Paris Hilton is to abstinence. The west also has the Golden State Warriors. Their marketing strategy went something like this…  if we call the franchise Golden State, maybe people won’t realize they’re in Oakland. Sorry guys, we saw through P.J. Carlesimo too.

Over in the East, things aren’t much better. Let’s see we have the Magic (shameless Disney suckup), the Heat (lazy, obvious, and silly), and the Wizards (wiccans were the only people happy about this name change). The Raptors are in the East too, which was came about during the Jurrasic Park dinasaur craze. I’m sure at the time they thought it was cool, but now the logo just looks like Barney’s delinquent little brother.

Finally, I don’t like the new team’s logo and colors either. They are too much like the Charlotte Bobcats. Again, no originality from the overpaid marketing firm. Don’t worry, it’s still not the worst logo design job ever. That honor goes to my alma mater: Indiana University. It’s not that I dislike the logo, it’s the price tab. IU’s previous A.D. paid $250,000 to go from this to this. Get rid of the drop shadow, change the font, change the color. Here’s an invoice for a quarter million dollars. It’s good work if you can get it.

Carry on, Citizens!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 7:51 pm and is filed under NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.