OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER: SPORTSCAST OR WEATHER REPORT?

Oklahoma City Thunder? Honestly it sounds like a semi pro team, or a WNBA team. I'ts not, it seems to be the top candidate for the Sonics' new name.

The franchise hightailed it out of Seattle after an ugly court case ended with an agreement between the team and the city of Seattle, which released the club from its lease at Key Arena.

According to an article on Yahoo Sports

"In the court case, the city of Seattle had been seeking to hold the owners of the Sonics to the remaining two years of the team’s Key Arena lease and Sonics’ season-ticket holders also filed a class-action lawsuit that contended they were tricked into buying tickets under the belief that the team would be staying in the Pacific Northwest.

"Sonics majority owner Clay Bennett and his ownership group alleged the team was losing money at KeyArena, thereby necessitating a move to Oklahoma City.

However, the Sonics and the city of Seattle came to an agreement on July 2, just hours before a district court judge was to issue a verdict on the six-day trial.

As per the agreement, the Oklahoma City franchise agreed to leave the Sonics’ name, logo and colors behind for a potential future NBA franchise in Seattle."

The six team names under consideration are the Barons, Bison, Energy, Marshals, Thunder, and Wind.

At least three of those names sound like potential WNBA team monikers in the opinion of this writer. If I had not read this article, and next year I overheard a sportscast talking about the OKC Energy, OKC Thunder, or OKC Wind, I would have just assumed that the WNBA highlights were coming up, and I would have abruptly changed the channel.

The Bison, Barons, and Marshalls all make me think of semi-pro sporting organizations.

Could the problem be that all the good nicknames for professional sports teams are already taken? Could it be that today's owners lack imagination? Maybe, because I'm so accustomed to the names that we already have in professional sports that anything new to me just seems weird. I don't know what the answer is, and quite possibly it's a combination of all three.

As I went back to read the other articles, I found a poll on what the new team name should be (obviously I am not the only person that thinks these names were terrible). Some of the suggestions weren't too bad ie... the Oklahoma City Aviators (still a little amateurish, but kinda catchy I think), and the Oklahoma City Bandits which in my honest opinion would be a good name for an NBA team.

A couple of the name were comical, such as, the Oklahoma City !"s, which had a picture next to it of the musical Oklahoma!. My personal favorite, being a man who was a child in the 80's and remembers the great cartoons of my age, the Oklahoma City Thundercats. That suggestion showed a picture of the cartoon next to it, and spewed a history of the cartoon's characters, but the cartoon aside, I think the Thundercats would be a good name, much better than just Thunder.

So what does everyone else think? Do you like any of the possible names, or even the suggested names? Do you have your own suggestions. Show some creativity here, it doesn't matter, because it looks as if we might be stuck with the Thunder being the newest team in the NBA.