(Photo by Ron Turenne/NBAE via Getty Images)
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Posts tagged as:
Raptors
Jay Triano WILL NOT be running the play you just drew up. (via tasmelas)
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Unfortunately, I’m not a professional NBA blogger yet. No, no. This nonsense is pure amateur hour. In my actual career, I’m a mailman. A letter carrier. A master of the postal arts. Il postino.
It’s not the best job, but I make it much better. I steal. A lot. I’d say that out of any given ten letters I pick up, I thieve seven or eight. And ya know who writes a ton of letters? NBA players. I was shocked too. But I’m talking, like, a ton. In fact, the only thing they mail more than letters are postcards. Yup. Postcards. They send em to everyone. They send them to each other. They send them to their coaches. People send postcards to them. And sometimes they even send postcards to themselves.
These are the ones I stole last week. (See also: The Central)
Boston Celtics
New Jersey Nets
New York Knicks
Philadelphia 76ers
Toronto Raptors
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The Toronto Raptors got their name and logo due to the popularity of Jurassic Park in the theaters. Since the velociraptors were the stars of the film, the front office designed a dinosaur dribbling a basketball to show that Toronto would be a fierce new franchise in the East and seduce all these teenage dino-crazies to buy tickets.
Initially, there was an idea to revive the name of old Toronto team, the Huskies, but management realized that the logo would have to be similar to the Timberwolves one, so a national contest was called to set the name for a new franchise. The winning names in the contest were dominated by animal names and included the Hogs (Toronto is nicknamed Hogtown) and the Beavers, so the choice of Raptors actually wasn’t that bad after all.
The plan backfired, however, when Raptors rewarded us fans with a 21-61 season and the nickname “The Craptors” was soon adopted by critics. The logo didn’t help very much. Although it describes the name of the team well enough (and it’s not a Hog!), it doesn’t look very serious, nor does it really show the fighting spirit. It looks like something you could have had as a child — remember the dinosaur collection on your shelf? When you grew up, they started looking funny instead of scary and you gave them to a charity store without sparing them a second look.
There is also the alternate logo, the mixture of a basketball and a paw, which may have a little more substance to it, although it is way more simple. It still fits in the concept of connecting a Raptor to the sport of basketball but doesn’t have the comical taste of a main logo. And looks better on the jerseys.
Kat B writes on the Raptors and the NBA at large for Foot on the Line and blogs about the NFL at Heels in the Huddle. She also has a Jumpman tattoo.
The Toronto Raptors: A Steve Spielberg Joint.
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…so that I could watch Hedo Turkoglu spit bars in a Turkish posse cut/cell phone commercial along with someone’s grandmother, three faux-mannequins rocking bridal gowns, a female yuppie, a balding escalator-runner, some mustachioed dude and a tuba trio.
Confused? So was Hedo. Just watch.
And in unrelated news, Bill Simmons has a very good, two-part rundown of the NBA off-season (Part 1 and Part 2) set to the backdrop of quotes from Almost Famous, which is inexplicably his favorite movie of the 2000s. As I put it on Eight Points, Nine Seconds:
Bill Simmons’ favorite movie of the 2000s is inexplicably Almost Famous. I mean, it’s a good flick and all, but better than City of God, Anchorman, Adaptation., There Will Be Blood, X2, Children of Men, No Country for Old Men, Snatch, Old School, Ocean’s Eleven, The Assassination of Jesse James, 25th Hour, The Savages, Zoolander, The Wrestler and Thank You For Smoking (among others)? Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, I suppose, but that’s a pretty odd movie to choose as a favorite, especially if you factor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Dark Knight and Iron Man.
Yes. I just quoted myself.
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