Ah, the 1990s … when gas was a dollar a gallon, Jenny McCarthy wasn’t making sociopolitical statements and all you needed to launch an expansion team was a bad market and the color purple (or teal). It was a time that gave us the Colorado Rockies, the Florida Marlins, the Vancouver Grizzlies and the most 1990s team of all, the Toronto Raptors. You saw Jurassic Park, didn’t you? Of course you did! And you loved it, right? Of course you did! HERE, HAVE A BASKETBALL TEAM. If they’d come along a few years later they would’ve been the “Toronto Independence Days.”
If you’re like me, you’ll be horrified to realize that Jurassic Park was released 20 years ago and that you are now old and think movies where dinosaurs eat guys on the toilet are dumb. Not Jurassic Park, though, the other ones. Jurassic Park is still amazing. But yeah, time marches on, the Florida Marlins go black and neon (and depressing) and become Miami, the Vancouver Grizzles drop the teal and relocate to Tennessee to become a real team, and the kids of 2013 don’t immediately think “RAPTORS” when you ask them to name something cool.
From The National Post:
On potentially changing the Raptors’ name: “We’re definitely going to take a look at it. It doesn’t mean we’re committed to it. It means it’s a good conversation. I saw those generic uniforms today in the paper. … That won’t be the uniform, by the way. I can assure you of that. I think we need to have this conversation.”
What’s the 2013 equivalent to a raptor? The Toronto Sharktopii? Or is it going to be another instance of a team rebranding with something vague that makes them sound like an Arena League Football team, like the Olkahoma City Thunder or the Minnesota Wild? Maybe something like the Atlanta Thrashers, which is just an animal but SOUNDS like a vague Arena League name? Even teams that rebrand with local iconography get shit for it, like the New Orleans Pelicans. How many posts did we read about how lame “Pelicans” is, and how many “pelicans eating other animals” videos were uploaded in response?
What kind of wildlife lives in Ontario, anyway? Beavers? Raccoons? You can’t call them the Toronto Beavers, unless you want your NBA franchise to read like a Big Johnson t-shirt. Can we stick with Jurassic Park dinosaurs? Call them the Toronto Dilophosauruses. Those guys were cooler than the raptors anyway.
