There are rumors swirling about what the new nickname and uniforms for the recently relocated Seattle Supersonics will be now that they’ve moved to Oklahoma City. Part of their official agreement with the city is that they cannot take the team name or the colors with them to OKC.
The leading contenders (verified off of recent trademark and domain name registrations) are Thunder, Bison, Barons, Energy, Wind, and Marshalls.
I think the Barons would be ironic as the team was essentially stolen from Seattle like a real robber baron would have done back in the day. Energy and Wind are a direct tie in with minority owner Aubrey McClendon’s company Chesapeake Energy. I believe that equals lame product tie-in and thus equally lame nickname.
The WNBA team from Seattle was already named the Storm and I would assume they’re moving to OKC as well. Thunder and Storm obviously go well together and fit in really well with the area’s weather. However, any real team name should end with an S. They should make that an official rule. Think about it, are there any cool teams that don’t have an S on the end? They could fix that by going native american with the Thunderbirds or old-school cartoon with the Thundercats.
There are some names that didn’t make the cut according to the various news sources that I actually like the best - Outlaws or Bandits. Either of those names would lend themselves to great imagery and a ton of uniform sales; plus a built in rivalry against their Texas neighbors, the Mavericks. But, the nba has too many image issues with players past and present to green light one of those choices.
The Tornadoes and Cyclones would make a lot of sense too, but again they’re probably too loaded with the amount of tragedy with which they can be associated. Then there’s the worst one of all I’ve seen floating around – the boomers or even the bombers. Terrible, with a capital T.
What name would you choose?
