The nickname Thunder is the name of a Minor League Baseball team, or a defunct NFL Europe team (i.e. the Berlin Thunder) or even a few defunct Arena Football Teams (i.e. the Columbus Thunderbolts, the Cleveland Thunderbolts, or the Houston ThunderBears). But under no circumstances should Commissioner David Stern have ever allowed the Oklahoma City team to be named the Thunder. I just cannot believe this is happening, but I guess it’s better than the alternatives. Other names in the running were Wind, Barons, Marshalls, Energy and Bison. Not a single good name in the mix!
The Toronto expansion franchise started a horrible trend in 1995 when they decided to name their team the Raptors due to the popularity of Jurassic Park. I mean come on, had anyone ever even heard of a raptor before that movie came out? The name is beyond dated. Then the NBA let their 2004 Charlotte expansion franchise name its team after its owner Robert L. Johnson, and now we have the Bobcats. I don’t care what anyone tells me, the “fan vote” was rigged and the fact that “the bobcat is one of the few indigenous predators to the Carolinas” is just an excuse for Bob Johnson to have named his team the Bob-cats. (link)I thought the Toronto Raptors and the Charlotte Bobcats were bad names, but now those teams look great compared to the Thunder. It’s not even plural! Arrrhhh! The other thing I don’t understand is why the Charlotte Bobcats and the Oklahoma City Thunder couldn’t decide on team colors. Both teams spent a lot of money on designing a team name, logo and colors, and yet they couldn’t even decide on a final two. No, these teams thought they’d be cute and just claim any number of colors they thought might look good together.
You see the Charlotte Bobcats’ colors are Bobcat Orange, Silver, Blue and Black, while the Oklahoma City Thunder’s colors are Light Blue, Orange, Navy Blue and Gold. Don’t they know that any respectable franchise only has two colors!?! At most a team throws in an alternate third color or maybe an unofficial secondary color like black and white, but not every color under the rainbow. I think this is going to backfire and eventually the team is going to have to settle on two (or maybe three) like the rest of the NBA, the NFL and MLB. After all of this, I can’t wait to see how bad the OKC Thunder’s jerseys are going to look. All I know is I feel sorry for Kevin Durant. I guess he should have stayed in college for one more year.
