The name of every NBA team is a story. The new NBA season is about to begin. If you don't think you are a real hardcore NBA fan, start here and learn the story behind the team naming.
On TV, the Lakers and the Nuggets are playing.
You know that the home of the Lakers is the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and you can call out the names of ten players. You know that the wife of Lakers small forward Fox is Broadway star venus williams. You even know that O 'Neill first came into contact with basketball in a German military camp. That guy named carmelo anthony is the third rookie this year. The mascot of the nugget is a little lion named Rocky. However, do you know why the Lakers are called Lakers and why the Nuggets are called Nuggets? Could it be that there are many lakes in Los Angeles, but Denver in the Rocky Mountains really has a lot of gold?
Maybe it's not that simple.
The NBA was founded on June 6th, 1946. At that time, the NBA was called BAA. In order to prevent the stadium from being idle outside the ice hockey competition, the owners of1/ice hockey hall and basketball court initiated the establishment of this basketball league, when there were 1 1 teams. After 57 years of evolution, there are 29 teams in the NBA today, and from 2004, there will be 30 teams in the whole league. However, from the naming principle, these teams can be divided into five types.
Single-minded-Lakers, Jazz.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz are both veteran teams in the West. However, from the name, both teams are not worthy of the name. They just use the names of their former teams. The Lakers 1948 just joined BAA and have been stationed in the cold Minneapolis. Understandably, the team named "Lakers" after the geographical nickname of "10000 lakes" in Minnesota. The name of the Lakers won the recognition of the local people. Under the leadership of super center Macon, the Minneapolis Lakers also won five championships. In order to continue the victory, even after the team 1960 moved to Los Angeles in the west, they decided to continue to use the old name of the Lakers.
1974, a new NBA team was founded in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans is the most popular place for jazz. It is the jazz capital of America. Therefore, the word "jazz", which best represents the local customs, was used in the team. 1979, jazz was transferred from New Orleans to Utah, which is Salt Lake City. Perhaps the name Jazz is really tempting, and no one has thought about whether it is necessary to change the name of the team. Therefore, even if there is no jazz music in Utah today, there is a strong jazz team.
The boss can type-Bull, Celtic, Knicks, Pistons.
When Richard Klein decided to set up an NBA team in Chicago, he was suddenly inspired-an aggressive bull has a never-say-die character, which is an indispensable quality of a champion team. In 1990s, under the leadership of Michael Jordan, the team showed the bull's persistent personality, and the team always fought to the end and never gave up. Obviously, it was a wise decision for Klein to name the team "Bulls". However, another way of saying it is that Chicago is a very developed area of animal husbandry. The local NFL team is Chicago Bears, and MLB has Chicago Cubs. As a result, NBA teams have become bulls named after animals.
Celtic and Knicks are both veteran teams in NBA, and they have been in Boston and new york since the establishment of BBA, and they have never changed their names. These two individual names were also decided by the team owner. The first owner of the Celts, walter brown, was the owner of the Boston Garden Stadium (the original home of the Celts). He organized a professional basketball team because he wanted to bring some entertainment to Boston fans on cold winter nights, instead of boxing or ice hockey. Brown came up with many team names, such as Cyclone, Olympics and Unicorn. Brown finally chose the Celtics because he remembered that in the early days of new york, there was a victorious army called the Celtics (19 14- 1939). However, more people think that Brown is a descendant of Scotland and decided to use this name to commemorate their ancestor-Celtic.
The founder of the Knicks was Ned Ethiopia, who decided to name his team Knickerbockers. Coincidentally, the first baseball team in new york's history was called the knickerbockers. The bloomers originated from Dutch immigrants who took root in new york in the17th century. They wear knee-length trousers, which are called bloomers. Because the name is too long, people call it "Knicks" for short. This is the Knicks.
The position of the piston is not in Detroit. 1948, the piston was founded in fort wayne, Indiana. At that time, the name of the team was "Fort Wayne ZollnerPistons", which was composed of the surname of the boss Fred Zollner and his automobile piston factory. 1957, in order to expand the team market, Zona moved the team to Detroit. Just as Detroit is famous for its automobile industry, the name piston fits the image of "automobile capital".
Referendum-Hornets, Heat, Magic, Timberwolves, Mavericks, Sun, Sonics, Cavaliers, Pioneers, Bucks, Raptors, Bobcats, Rockets and Clippers.
Not all NBA bosses decide everything, and bosses are also quite democratic. 1On April 22nd, 987, the NBA decided to form new teams in Charlotte, Miami, Orlando and Minnesota. The four new bosses "respected the public opinion" in unison, handed over the important task of naming rights to the fans, and held voting activities to name the team.
In Charlotte, the fans overturned the team's first proposal "Spirit". After the team reduced the recommended names to six, "Wasp" stood out. Charlotte's logo has a pattern of wasps. It is said that during the Civil War, wasps near Charlotte helped the Confederate troops stationed there to repel the northern troops. Since then, the wasp has been regarded as the patron saint of Charlotte and its mascot is a bumblebee. When the Hornets moved from Charlotte to New Orleans, the team still adopted the team name, although some New Orleans people had hoped that Utah would return the jazz's name to New Orleans and let the jazz go home.
Miami residents chose heat among the candidate names of shark, tornado, beach and barracuda. Miami, Florida is hot all year round, and the heat also symbolizes that the team has a prosperous future. Orlando's choice is magic, and the famous Disneyland is located in Orlando. In order to promote tourism, the municipal government shouted the famous slogan "Welcome to Magic"; After several rounds of voting, Minnesota people have been swinging between Timberwolves and Polars. In the end, the timberwolves won with a score of 2:/kloc-0:, because timberwolves are a specialty of Minnesota, where there are the most timberwolves in the United States except Alaska.
In fact, many NBA teams are the result of a referendum. Dallas people chose the calf from more than 4600 nominations. The word "maverick" represents the famous cowboy image in Texas-however, it may be more accurate to translate the team name into "pony" because the team is marked with a beautiful horse head; Phoenix people choose the sun because Arizona has a tropical climate and sunny all year round; Seattle people chose supersonic speed because Boeing, the largest civil aircraft manufacturing company in the United States, is located in this beautiful western city. 1967, Boeing just put forward the passenger plane manufacturing plan of "supersonic transport plane", and the locals chose supersonic as the name of the NBA team-ironically, Boeing's manufacturing plan was abandoned halfway; The name Knight was chosen with the help of local media in Cleveland, and it won more than one-third of the more than 6,000 votes. Portland Pioneers was founded in 1970. Portland is the center of western development, and the use of pioneers is really characteristic of the times.
Bucks are Milwaukee's choice. They used to swing between the names of beavers and many other animals. Fortunately, they identified themselves as Milwaukee's unique wild stag, with good jumping ability. Otherwise, today's NBA team may be called "Milwaukee Skunk". Raptors are also the choice of the public. This extremely fierce, fast and bouncing dinosaur touched Toronto people. Starting from the 2004-2005 season, the NBA will set up a new team named Bobcats in Charlotte. Bobcats are the choice of Charlotte people. Bob Johnson, the new owner of the team, wants his name to appear in the team name, while Charlotte has a tradition of naming professional teams after cats.
It is worth mentioning that the Houston Rockets, as the seat of NASA, quickly matched the name of the Rockets. But rockets are not Houston's choice. The hometown of the Rockets is San Diego, California. San Diego's nickname is "the city in motion", so the local people chose the Rockets as the team name in the initial vote. 1970- 197 1 season, the team moved to Houston, Texas. Houston seems to be more suitable for the name rocket than San Diego. San Diego has been looking forward to another NBA team since the Rockets left. 1978, the buffalo warriors originally located in new york finally moved here. The team's top management believes that the Warriors are completely inconsistent with the image of San Diego, and it is another round of referendum. San Diego, which is famous for its water sports, takes the clippers that can be seen everywhere in the offshore as the new name of the team-tourists really like to cruise in the blue sky and blue sea by clippers. San Diego is doomed to miss the NBA. 1984, the Clippers moved to neighboring Los Angeles again, and Los Angeles became the city of two NBA teams.
Swinging-eagle, gold bars, warriors, nets, kings, spurs.
It is not easy to trace the history and naming of NBA teams. Some teams are like gypsies. For example, the Atlanta Hawks moved three times in 20 years until they took root in Atlanta from 65438 to 0968. The original name of the Hawk Team was "Three Cities Black Hawk Team", and the Black Hawk came from Suk Indian Chief "Black Hawk". At that time, the research team took three small cities as their homes: Moline, Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa. Chief Black Hawk Tribe is located on the rock island of 183 1, where the famous "Battle of Black Hawk" took place. 195 1, the team moved to Milwaukee in the north, and the team name was changed from "Black Hawk" to "Eagle". Four years later, the team moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and changed its name to St. Louis Hawks. 13 later, the Eagles moved to Atlanta and finally found their own Ying Chao.
1967, Denver rocket joined ABA league. 1975- 1976 After the end of the season, ABA was annexed by the NBA, and four ABA teams, including Denver Rockets, joined the NBA. Because the name "Rocket" already belongs to Houston, Denver had to be renamed Nuggets. /kloc-In the 9th century, the Rocky Mountains where Denver was located were a paradise for gold diggers. At that time, in the western development, westerners discovered gold mines here.
The hometown of Golden State Warriors is Philadelphia. At that time, their names were "Philadelphia Warriors"-the warriors paid tribute to the warriors who died in the American Revolutionary War. 194 1 year, the team moved to San Francisco, California, and changed its name to San Francisco Warriors. 197 1 year, the Warriors moved to Auckland again. California is rich in gold, and the warriors who thought they were enough to represent the whole of California decided to move California's alias "Golden State" to themselves. At the same time, they still retain the old name of warrior. Golden State Warriors has also become the only team in the NBA whose team name is not composed of place names and names.
Nets 1967 was established in new york. Only one year later, the Nets found it impossible to grab the basketball market from the Knicks, so they moved to New Jersey, just across the river from new york. It is named Nets, because Nets is an indispensable part of basketball. In addition, there are famous baseball teams Mets and American football teams Jets in new york. We want to get a net that is homophonic with them, and we also want to touch the brilliance of these two big-name teams. However, at first they asked the new york Nets to hang out in Aba. 1976 After it was merged into the NBA, the Knicks in new york already existed, so it was forced to change its name to the New Jersey Nets.
Sacramento Kings is also a turbulent team. Their predecessor was the royal family that 1945 joined. 1957, the team moved to Cincinnati and changed its name to Cincinnati Royal; 1972, their family moved to Kansas city, Missouri. Fans voted for the Kings in Omaha, Kansas, because the team also played some home games in Omaha, Nebraska. 1975, the team decided to take Omaha from the team name. 1985, the team moved westward to Sacramento, the capital of California, with the same name.
1973, a basketball team moved from Dallas to San Antonio. 1967 the team was called chaparrals when it was founded, because these bushes are all over Texas and Mexico. 1970, in order to win the recognition of Texas, the team changed its name to Texas Dwarf Woods, but after 1, they changed their original name. After moving to San Antonio, after public voting, people chose the "Spur" which represents Texas culture, because the Spur on riding boots is an essential tool for every cowboy.
A beat of the head-wizards, pacers, 76 ers, grizzly bears.
1997, Washington Bullet was renamed Washington Wizards, which is also full of stories. The team's predecessor was the Packers' Team. 196 1 founded the team because the team owner owned a packaging factory. A year later, the team was renamed Zephyrs. 1963, the team moved to Baltimore. During World War II, Baltimore was an important arsenal. The arms industry here is very developed, so the team changed its name to Baltimore Bullets. 1973- 1974 season, the team was renamed Capital Bullets again; Later, they changed it to Washington bullets. However, Bullet boss Pauline thought the name was too bloody and not peaceful enough, so he changed the name of the team to Wizarding Team in 1997-Pauline really longed for his team to have the magical ability of wizards or wizards.
1967, the top management of Indiana professional basketball team decided to name their team in a way different from other teams: named the team after its goal. They are eager for this team to become a good example of professional basketball (set a good pace) and move forward step by step, so their team is called Pacers. Another explanation is that in the Indy 500 racing car that Indiana is crazy about, the safety car is called Pacecar, and the team is named after the pedestrians, which obviously can rub the popularity of Indy 500.
1963, Philadelphia Warriors moved to San Francisco. In the same year, the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia to fill the vacancy. The owner of the country decided to change the name of the team to the 76ers to commemorate the revolutionary pioneer's signing of the Declaration of Independence at the Independence Memorial Hall in Philadelphia on July 4th. 1776.
Despite moving from Vancouver to Memphis in 2002, the team still uses the name Grizzly Bear. Grizzly bears are quite symbolic in the aboriginal culture of northwest America, and there are nearly 20 thousand grizzly bears in British Columbia where Vancouver is located, so the grizzly bear, which symbolizes strength, has become the name of Vancouver team. In fact, after moving to Memphis, the team had envisaged changing the name of Grizzly Bear to Express, because FedEx, the largest express delivery company in the United States, is headquartered in Memphis, and the company is also the sole sponsor of the team. However, the NBA headquarters flatly rejected the Grizzlies' request for renaming, and the league's regulations on team naming are quite clear: the team name is strictly prohibited from containing any commercial color.
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The origin of NBA team names
There are 29 teams in NBA. The team name of each team not only indicates the position of the team, but also has a very interesting nickname. Do you know where these nicknames come from?
Celtic Boston has many Irish immigrants, many of whom are Celts, so the name of the team was called "Original Celtic Team" when it was first built, and later it was simply called "Celtic Team".
The Heat was built in Miami, Florida, where the seasons are warm and pleasant, so it was chosen as the "Heat" among many candidate teams, which not only showed the climate conditions in Miami, but also hoped that the team would have a prosperous future.
Nets refers to nets, which is one of the indispensable elements in basketball. The reason why the Nets got this name is related to basketball on the one hand, and on the other hand, because before the establishment of the New Jersey Nets, there were baseball teams METS and football teams JETS in new york, but these two teams were full-fledged, and the Nets took the homophonic nets of the two, in fact, they also wanted to touch their light.
The correct name of Knicks is "knickerbockers", because there are a large number of Dutch immigrants in new york, and the Dutch like to wear loose knickerbockers, while "Knicks" is just a transliteration of the word "knickerbockers".
The Magic Team is named after Disney World Park, the main entertainment venue in Orlando. "Come to magic" is the favorite saying of Orlando people.
The predecessor of the 76ers was the Syracuse national team, but it was changed to the 76ers after it moved to Philadelphia in 1963, because Philadelphia was the place where the United States declared its independence in 1776.
When the Wizards' base camp was still in Baltimore, the team was called "Bullets" because Baltimore's arms industry was very developed. After the team moved to Washington, it used the name "Bullets" until the season of 1997- 1998, and some people called it "Wizards".
The Hawks were originally named "Three Cities Black Hawks" and borrowed the name of the Chief "Black Hawk". 195 1 moved to milwaukee and changed its name to "eagles". 1955 moved to St. Louis, 1968 moved to Atlanta, and has been using the name "Eagles" ever since.
The team emblem of the Hornets is a vicious hornet, which is a collection of works from the society. In addition, the city emblem of Charlotte also has the pattern of bees.
Bull Chicago's animal husbandry is very developed. The city's professional football and professional baseball have teams named after animals, so "Bull" has become the team name of Chicago's professional team.
Cleveland, Cavaliers, voted locally when naming the newly established professional basketball team. As a result, more than one-third of the 6000 votes chose "knight".
When Piston 1948 joined the NBA, the base camp was in Ford Wynn. The boss is engaged in piston manufacturing, and "piston" becomes the team name. 1957, after the team moved to Detroit, it still used this team name.
The English name of the walker is Pacers, which is very similar to Pacecar. Pacecar is the leading car of Indiana 500 (one of the world-famous racing events with the same name as F 1), and its popularity is not as good as that of famous racing cars. The team is named after "Pacers" and naturally wants to be famous by the popularity of "Indiana 500".
Bucks, like many teams that don't know what animal name to name their team, Milwaukee is hesitant to name its own team. Finally, among a lot of animal names including "skunk" and "beaver", Milwaukee chose the wild "Buck" as the team name.
Raptors This is a team that was born in 1993 Canada. Team names were also collected, and the fierce, fast and bouncing "dragon" was finally selected.
Mavericks 1980 In March, the team owner selected "Mavericks" as the team name from about 4,600 names collected.
Originally named "Denver Rockets", the gold nuggets team is one of the founding teams of ABA. After 1974 joined the NBA, it was renamed the "gold nugget team" because 19 discovered a gold mine in Denver during the western development in the century.
The name "Rocket" became more worthy of the name after the Rockets first moved to Houston, where the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is located, in 199 1.
Timberwolves are named after a large number of wild animals in Minnesota.
One of the founding teams of Spurs ABA, the original base camp of the team was Dallas, and the team was named Dallas Oaks. 1970 was renamed Oaks, Texas, and 1973 was renamed Spurs after moving to San Antonio. The "Spur" is the iron needle nailed to the heel by the rider. Taking this as the team name can reflect the characteristics of the times in the development of the western region of the United States.
Jazz was founded in 1974, but the home court is in New Orleans, and the team name is "Jazz of New Orleans". 1980 After moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, they still use the name "Jazz".
Grizzly bear, another new Canadian army founded in 1994, is named after grizzly bear, a very representative animal in western Canada, which symbolizes the power of basketball.
Warriors 1946 was born in Philadelphia. The team was named "Philadelphia Warriors" to pay tribute to the warriors who died in the American Revolution. 1962 After moving to San Francisco, it was changed to "Golden State Warriors".
The speedboat team 1970 was founded in Buffalo and was named "Buffalo Braves". 1978 moved to San Diego and changed its name to "San Diego Clippers". 1980 moved to Los Angeles.
Before the Lakers moved to Los Angeles, the team's base camp was Minneapolis, Minnesota. Because there are many lakes in this area, they chose "Lakers" as the team name, which has been used ever since.
Suns was founded in 1968, and its team name was also collected. Phoenix is the capital of Arizona, with little annual precipitation and plenty of sunshine. The team name "Sun" is the most representative.
Trailblazers was founded in 1970, when Portland was just the center of western development, so naming the team after "Trailblazers" can also reflect the characteristics of that era.
The Kings changed their names more times than any other team in the NBA. It was first named "Rochester Royals", 1957 was renamed "Cincinnati Royals", and 1972 was renamed "Kansas City-Omaha Kings". It was not until 1985 that it settled in Sacramento and changed its name to "Sacramento"
The supersonic team was born in Seattle and is the headquarters of Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer. 1967 when the team was established, Boeing was developing and manufacturing supersonic passenger aircraft, and the team established with the help of Boeing also chose the name "supersonic".