Most of these team names would have been much better than "Raptors"



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I said "the most".

Hornets still use teal as their primary color. (And since this is the second edition of this franchise, it can be viewed in a more naughty / nostalgic way.) Most of the 90s, in professional sports, obviously there is a team called the Raptors. It should not be like that.

Not just the 90s, but extremely 1994, and you may blame Stephen Spielberg. Jurassic Park The NBA Toronto expansion team received its name through a combination of submissions and votes from its fans, and finally to the team and league leaders who made the final call after have attended a survey. And I understand Jurassic Park ruled. Velociraptors reigned. (The Velociraptors reign a little less these days, knowing that they looked more like bad chickens.) I would have absolutely wanted to name a basketball team the Raptors. But I was 10 years old and no one should have been listening to me.

Toronto had ideas. A lot of "em." In most cases, very good ideas. Gil Meslin plunged his head into the archives and went out with Toronto Star coverage by the naming process, including this long list of fan submissions for potential team names. (Click to enlarge the entire image.)

It's a mix of good and serious ideas (Toronto Arrows, Toronto Whiskeyjacks, Toronto Yorks) and bad serious ideas (Toronto Bucketers, Toronto Axis, Toronto Bounce) and clear jokes (Toronto John Candy, Toronto Blue Basketball, Toronto Tallboys) and mass names, which belong to their time under the name of Dinosaurs (Toronto Bounce, Toronto Torch, Toronto Blast), as well as the Toronto Thunderducks.

And then there were the names of dinosaurs. ("Toronto T-Rex" was popular enough to be on the short list, "Torontosaurus Rex" is crazy and bright and so silly that I like it.)

In the end, the team's owners reduced their list to 10, which they would have all apparently accepted as a real team name, if the people had been decreed. Because the next step was the vote of the fans to reduce the number of votes to 10.

The three finalists were Dragons, Bobcats and Raptors. The final decision was made by the club and league officials. I can not stay here and look you in the eye and say with an impassive face that one of the other two choices was clearly better. Which, I suppose, means that where things have really gone wrong is to let the public have their say to reduce it.

The advantage of this is that the name is the Toronto. Their choice, their team, their raptors. Familiarity and property engender affection. In 2013, at a relatively low point in the franchise's fortune, MLSE president Tim Leiweke had then announced what looked like a test balloon when he launched a new branding and said publicly that the property would consider changing the name of the team. They eventually had new logos and new uniforms, but the idea of ​​abandoning "Raptors" proved so inefficient with the public that he was allowed to die silently. It turned out that fans had such memories – not even necessarily well memories associated with the Raptors that they could not imagine being anything else.

Now, with the Raptors in the final for the first time, they have created a memory strong enough for all, but they ensure that "Raptors" is here to stay. After a while, even a silly team name that tells exactly when and why it was chosen becomes a story that speaks less of his birth than what he has become.

It would always be cool if they put feathers on the logo, although.

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