New Orleans Pelicans Unveil Official Team Logo

It’s official. The New Orleans Hornets will be known as the New Orleans Pelicans at the beginning of the 2013-14 NBA season.

The team made the announcement via NBA.com late on Thursday afternoon.

New owner Tom Benson and the organization held a press conference on Thursday to publicly unveil the new logo and uniforms.

As you can see, the team has ditched its old color scheme in favor of a new one that includes a primary emphasis on blue, a secondary on gold, and red as a tertiary.

While some may not like the idea of a pelican representing the franchise, it has origins as the state bird and in the official Louisiana nickname, the “Pelican State.”

The team put out a fact sheet to explain their choice, which you can view here.

It’s a welcome change to a team that is on the up-and-up—one that finally has a mascot that makes sense for the area and that fans can call their own.

This club is finally on the verge of turning its fortunes around, after a season in the NBA basement following the controversial trade that sent Chris Paul to the Clippers.

The team bottomed out, but it encountered some good luck when the lottery gods awarded New Orleans the No. 1 pick in the 2012 draft—which turned out to be stud big man Anthony Davis.

With the star rookie blossoming, plus talented swingman Eric Gordon and a plethora of great role players—such as Ryan Anderson and Robin Lopez—beginning to gel, the future is looking extremely bright down in the Big Easy.

Hopefully, this nickname change will rejuvenate this once-proud franchise and give the players yet another reason to fight hard to make a playoff run next season.