OK City NBA Franchise Goes With Weathery “Thunder”
Just as we speculated in late June, the NBA franchise that is leaving Seattle and re-forming in Oklahoma City… has gone with a “weather” mascot and picked “Thunder.”
As we noted before, we find the fascination with “weather” mascots to be puzzling.
On the one hand, they’re not likely to offend people since there aren’t any direct or indirect slurs that might be packed into the name (e.g., the Syracuse Orangemen) .
On the other hand… they’re boring, right?
More to the point… in this day and age of global climate change… storms seems to be getting more fierce and, yes, offensive.
For example, as Hurricane Ike starts to throw its weight around the Florida Keys and possibly the Gulf Coast… we can’t see how any fans in that part of the country (e.g., New Orleans) could think it’s cool to root for a team named after Hurricanes (e.g., the U of Miami).
It’s for this reason that we’re not surprised that OK City avoided something like the ‘Canes as their mascot.
But, thunder?
Thunder isn’t even something that you can see, and so how do you even pretend to have a mascot for it?
In fact, oddly enough, the Oklahoma City franchise’s decision has ensnared the Golden State Warriors’ mascot, whose name was mysteriously Thunder.
Uh, speaking of which, how did the Seattle Supersonics figure out their mascot (since “supersonic” is also difficult to represent with a cartoon)?
There’s was the mythical creature of the Northwest, the sasquatch.
Given the above…
If we had to make a recommendation, we’d suggest that the Thunder franchise invites their would-be fans to participate in the development of a mascot since (1) they don’t necessarily have many fans at the moment and (2) there is not going to be any necessary relationship between their franchise name and their mascot.
Apparently, the experts who get paid lots of money to make recommendations like this call it “crowdsourcing.”
We’re inclined to call it common sense, though, in the kind of case.
But, for sure, if the Thunder want to pay us for our advice, we’d be happy to talk turkey.
Tags: hurricanes, mascots, NBA, Oklahoma City, sasquatch, thunder
