Thursday, August 07, 2008

Slip of the Site OR You ruined everything! You big ruiner!

Kudos to the guys over at Deadspin for pointing this one out: despite their best attempts to keep things under wraps and secretive by trademarking a variety of names, the Oklahoma City basketball consortium may have had their party spoiled!

As this screen shot posted on Deadspin reveals, upon the release of the NBA schedule yesterday the league site, nba.com, the top banner on one page read, "2007-08 Oklahoma City Thunder Schedule."

And so now let the debate begin on whether this is a new NBA or a WNBA franchise! (although really, when you drop off the "Super" the "Sonics" could go either way as well). Although it was assumed before, the management group did try and throw people off with their trademark bonanza of 6 potential names. I personally preferred the "Barons," but apparently I was wrong. Since nothing official had been released this can be categorized under the pretty awesome blunder heading, and you have to love it when this sort of thing happens and it gets caught and put out in public!

2 comments:

sager said...

Barons is too close to Robber Barons, which is what Clay Bennett and Aubrey McLendon are.

Oklahoma City Thunder sounds either like...

(a) an afl2 team (b) a minor-league hockey team or (c) a softball team ... it's not like every good name has been taken (or maybe they have, which is why Toronto had to use "Raptors").

As for the WNBA, everyone should get on the Seattle Storm bandwagon when their league comes back from the Olympic break on Aug 28. They're second in the league right now and the owners are working on completely disentangling themselves from any association with the Sonics ownership.

Seattle also needs a tenant in Key Arena, since the WHL Thunderbirds are moving to the suburbs.

Andrew Bucholtz said...

The Storm have a pretty awesome team, with Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson and Swin Cash. 'Twas nice of Robber Baron Clay to not insist on taking them with him too...