Note to future NBA franchise owners: don't listen to nerds.
History:
The Toronto Raptors are one of the younger franchises in the NBA, but they have had some success, namely drafting Vince Carter in the 1998 Draft. Of their fourteen seasons, they have had five winning seasons, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but they are just two shy of matching the Clippers’ number of winning seasons, who have been around for thirty nine seasons.
The Toronto Terriers: not remotely terrifying.
The Raptors were a unique addition to the NBA: they, along with the Vancouver Grizzlies, were the first Canadian teams and Toronto was the first to be buoyed by a bunch of nerds. Allow me to explain that last part. Many people wonder about the origin of the Raptors’ team nickname, but very few know the true story. As most new franchises decide to enter the league, they usually hold a naming contest to help generate excitement for the new team and ease pressure on the marketing executives to pick a good team name. Toronto was no exception, receiving over 2,000 different entries. A shortlist of the ten “best” ideas were released to the public: Beavers, Bobcats, Dragons, Grizzlies, Hogs, Raptors, Scorpions, T-Rex, Tarantulas, and Terriers. If only our exclusive “Inside the Name” series had been released many years ago to aid their decision, they would have eliminated lame names like the Beavers, Hogs (apparently, one of Toronto’s nicknames is “Hogtown”), and Terriers, but even without our groundbreaking series, they seemed to be heading in the right direction with the slew of terrifying nicknames at their disposal.
Alas, the “Raptors” moniker was chosen for the popularity of the Jurassic Park movie, which was released in 1993, which nerds embraced with open arms. In the seven months that followed the team name announcement in 1994, the Raptors were seventh in merchandise sales, despite the fact that they had not even played a single game. My suggestion to future NBA franchises: while this was a success story (largely because “the Raptors” is such a badass team nickname), don’t listen to nerds, or else we’ll end up with terrible, terrible names, like the Vancouver Vampires or the Honolulu Harry Potters.
Don't let this guy be the face of your franchise.
Posted by The Freelancer 
