1) New Orleans Pelicans (Hornets)
2) Charlotte Hornets (Bobcats)

A connection between “Hornets” and Charlotte goes back to the Revolutionary War, when British commander Lord Cornwallis described the stubbornly resistant city as a “veritable hornet’s nest.” It was a catchy name for an NBA team and a popular one, not just in Charlotte but across the country, or at least wherever Starter jackets were sold. It wasn’t enough for owner George Shinn, who relocated the team to New Orleans in 2002. David Stern promised the NBA would soon return to Charlotte and delivered the Bobcats, which felt like a Hornets simulacrum with their orange color scheme and generic name. Meanwhile, the financially struggling Hornets were purchased by Tom Benson and given a full rebrand, including a name change to Pelicans, a bird native to the New Orleans area. This allowed the Bobcats to switch back to their rightful Hornets name. The official franchise histories became a little convoluted but there was certainly no concern over where a championship banner would hang, as neither franchise has ever advanced past the second round of the playoffs.

3) Atlanta Hawks (Bisons, Blackhawks)

Their logo is the predator bird but the Hawks in Atlanta Hawks is technically short for Blackhawks. They started life as the Buffalo Bisons in 1946 in the National Basketball League (NBL), then relocated and became the Tri-Cities Blackhawks upon joining the NBA in 1949. “Tri-Cities” refers to the cities of Moline, Illinois (where they played most home games), Rock Island, Iowa, and Davenport, Iowa, which sit along the Illinois-Iowa border. “Blackhawks” was a nod to the Black Hawk War, waged in that area in 1832 between U.S. troops and Sauk Tribe leader Black Hawk. As other small market, regional NBA franchises began folding en masse in the early ’50s, the Blackhawks ensured survival by relocating to Milwaukee. That’s where the name was shortened to Hawks, a bird prevalent in Wisconsin. They relocated again just four years later to St. Louis, where the bird is much less common but the Hawks name stayed, and it remained through their 1969 nesting in their current home of Atlanta.

4) Detroit Pistons (Zollner Pistons)

It makes perfect sense for a Motor City team to be nicknamed after a car component but the Pistons name actually traces back to Fort Wayne, Indiana with Fred Zollner. Nicknamed “Mr. Pro Basketball” for his later prominent role in the NBA’s formation, Zollner founded the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons in 1937, named after his foundry which manufactured automobile pistons. Known colloquially in and around town as the “Zollners,” the Pistons won two NBL titles and were one of seven former NBL franchises to join the NBA in 1949. Aiming to shed basketball’s amateurish industrial league past, Zollner agreed to drop his name and call the team the Fort Wayne Pistons. When Zollner relocated the franchise to Detroit in 1957, the Pistons name was an obvious continuation. Even though the Zollner name no longer graces any NBA marquees, it does live on in the Western Conference championship trophy, which was renamed after Zollner in 1999, the same year he was posthumously inducted in the Hall of Fame.

5) Oklahoma City Thunder (SuperSonics)

When Clay Bennett relocated his basketball franchise from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008, retaining the SuperSonics name was a non-starter. As part of the settlement from a lawsuit filed by the city of Seattle, Bennett had to leave behind the SuperSonics moniker, as well as the retired jerseys, the 1979 championship trophy, and several other artifacts. In exchange, Bennett was granted Kevin Durant and the rest of the roster, some arena seats, some office equipment, and a fresh start. For the first full-time Oklahoma City NBA franchise (both the Hornets and Kings had played partially in OKC in the past), Bennett took his time picking a new name. A fan submission contest was undertaken, with Thunder beating out fellow finalists Bison, Energy, and Wind. The NBA eventually returning to Seattle has been a steady assumption for the past 15 years and counting. Whether it’s via league expansion or another team relocating, one thing is for sure: the classic name of SuperSonics will be coming back.

6) Philadelphia 76ers (Nationals)

The era of NBA regional teams was killed off by the early ’50s, as franchises in Providence, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Sheboygan, and Waterloo failed to survive, while teams in Fort Wayne, Rochester, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis had to relocate to more heavily populated locales. The one medium-sized city holdout was the Syracuse Nationals. And why not? The team was one of the NBA’s most consistently successful, reaching the playoffs in their first 14 seasons, playing in three NBA Finals, and winning the 1955 title. They may have held out even longer, if not for the Philadelphia Warriors moving to San Francisco, leaving a huge East Coast city without a franchise. Syracuse became the Philadelphia 76ers in 1963, led by a new head coach in franchise legend Dolph Schayes. 76ers, of course, is a nod to the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia in 1776. The name Nationals was a patriotic gesture by original owner Daniel Biasone, an Italian immigrant.

“In essence a fly-by-night league on a shoe-string budget, it was not uncommon for the ABA to see regular city and name changes on the whims of its owners.”

7) Los Angeles Clippers (Braves)

With the ABA expanding and encroaching on their territory, the NBA responded with rapid expansion in the early ’60s, including the Buffalo Braves. It was poor timing, as the Western New York city, like most of the U.S. “Rust Belt,” was in the early stages of economic decimation by deindustrialization and suburban flight. Even though the Braves were a contender by the mid ’70s, they were struggling financially enough for owner Paul Snyder to take action. When a relocation to Miami was blocked by a lawsuit from the city of Buffalo, Snyder unloaded the franchise on John Brown, who soon after “traded” it to Celtics owner Irv Levin. It was an unprecedented transaction, facilitated by Levin because he knew the Braves could be moved to his home state of California. The Buffalo Braves thus became the San Diego Clippers in 1979, renamed as such as an ode to the oceanfront city’s maritime history. The name was’t as appropriate after a 1984 move to Los Angeles but miserly owner Donald Sterling either didn’t notice or didn’t care, retaining it to this day.

8) San Antonio Spurs (Chaparrals, Gunslingers)
9) Brooklyn Nets (Americans)
10) Denver Nuggets (Larks, Rockets)

Of the 12 franchises that came and went in the ABA, only the Indiana Pacers and the Kentucky Colonels never changed names. The three franchises that joined Indiana in the 1976 NBA merger had all gone through at least one re-branding. The Spurs began life as the Dallas Chaparrals, then changed to the Texas Chaparrals in their second season in an attempt at wider appeal. When that didn’t work, the team was solid in 1971 and relocated to San Antonio, where they were temporarily called the Gunslingers before receiving their current name Spurs. Meanwhile, the Americans were named as such by owner Arthur Brown, who envisioned a patriotic New York team. That didn’t quite work out, as the Knicks protested their proposed Manhattan locale, forcing the Americans to begin life in Teaneck, New Jersey. They eventually did reach New York via Long Island, becoming the Nets in 1968 to fall into a rhyming scheme with the NFL’s Jets and MLB’s Mets. As for Denver, they were originally called the Larks, after the Colorado state bird, but owner James Trindle had to sell the franchise before they ever took the court. New owner Bill Ringsby renamed them the Rockets, after a branded line of semis utilized by his trucking company. This stuck until 1974, when a merger with the NBA seemed imminent and an overlap with the Houston Rockets was a concern. Nuggets was chosen by fan vote, a reference to the area’s gold rush history, and a nod to a Denver-based NBA franchise of the same name from the late ’40s.

11) Sacramento Kings (Seagrams, Pros, Royals)

There hasn’t been much tangible success in Kings franchise history but no other NBA team can claim a timeline as rich and varied. They started life in upstate New York as the semi-pro Rochester Seagrams in 1923, sponsored by the local alcohol distillery and mainly featuring its employees on the roster. The name was changed to the Pros in the early ’40s to try and gain some credibility and it seemed to work, as they were invited to join the NBL in 1945. A name-the-team contest was held and the alliterative Rochester Royals was the winner (it doubled as an ode to their company team past, as Crown Royal is the name of a signature whisky produced by Seagram). Royals was the name established when the franchise joined the NBA in 1948, and followed its 1957 relocation to Cincinnati, still appropriate in a locale known as the “Queen City.” In 1972 they moved again, this time to Kansas City, and due to the local baseball team already being named the Royals, they changed again, keeping things regal with Kings. The name remained in place when the team relocated to California in 1985.

12) Washington Wizards (Packers, Zephyrs, Bullets)

The Chicago Packers were technically the first NBA expansion franchise in ’61-’62, with a name derived from the city’s rich history of meat packing. Despite the presence of Rookie of the Year Walt Bellamy, the Packers struggled to compete against more seasoned teams and ticket sales were flagging by season’s end. Management fretted that sharing a name with a rival NFL team was one major source of the problem, so they changed it to the Zephyrs in ’62-’63, a nod to Chicago’s “Windy City” nickname. But local interest was still lacking and in 1963 the franchise moved to Baltimore. They took on the new name of Bullets, as an ode to the Baltimore Bullets franchise that won the 1948 NBA title then folded in 1955 (the original Bullets derived the name from the historic Old Baltimore Shot Tower, a brick tower that produced shot in the 19th century and was once the nation’s tallest structure). The Bullets moniker carried through the franchise’s relocation to Washington in 1973, but was finally changed to Wizards by owner Abe Pollin in 1997, reportedly in response to the assassination of his good friend, Israeli prime minister Yitzkhak Rabin.

13) Los Angeles Lakers (Gems)

Most fans know that the Los Angeles Lakers began play in Minneapolis, and curiously kept the team name after moving from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” to the land of 10,000 freeways. But it’s a lesser-known fact that the Minneapolis Lakers came about as essentially a buy-out of a folded NBL franchise called the Detroit Gems. The Gems were owned by Maurice Winston and derived their name from his Winston Jewelers company. They played their home games outside of the city at a high school gymnasium in Dearborn, drawing scant fans while compiling one of the worst campaigns in pro basketball history, finishing 4-40 in the NBL in ’46-’47. Two Minneapolis businessmen purchased the Gems for $15,000 and relocated the team to their hometown, renamed them the Lakers, and inherited the Gems’ top pick in the league’s 1947 dispersal draft, which they used on George Mikan. After winning the NBL title in 1948, the Lakers then won five titles in their first six years in the NBA and played in one more NBA Finals in Minneapolis in 1959 before moving to Los Angeles.

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