IBC

Atlanta "Dream"?

That sucks.

If I'm ever in any position of real power the first thing I will do is exert it to end singular team names. Z I'd really love to hear some behind the scenes stuff about how that name was chosen.

Sure - easy enough, the owner wanted the name the entire time. It was the top vote-getter as well. Basically, the pulse we took from the people was no more bird names in Atlanta, and it's best to historically tie it to the city. The "Peaches" were taken by women's baseball team, and thus it was the "Dream" in honor of MLK. One of the last things I did down there was create a starting point on a relationship between the team and the Coretta Scott King School (school for just 6th grade girls, will eventually be an all-female public middle school). The basis of the tie-in is that it's the school and the team's first year. The naming had nothing to do with that, but ultimately ties in quite nicely.

Overall, for the W and the D-League I am 100% in favor of selling the naming rights to a sponsor, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Basically, like the purple and pink of the 90's, names like the "Mercury" and "Sun" are going to seem really stupid in a decade, and the "Dream" will just seem moderately dumb.

The team could have done a MUCH better job soliciting outside input, or creating a better name, but all told it could be a hell of a lot worse. The Atlanta Sizzle?

Should've sold naming rights to Georgia Pacific. If you named them the Dixie Cups, I might actually watch a WNBA game for 3 minutes. Besides, at this point everything in the world is named after Martin Luther King, lets name things after other people or things

The Atlanta X..

or were you referring to NOT naming things after prominent black historical figures?

Atlanta Pit Bulls!

Should've sold naming rights to Georgia Pacific. If you named them the Dixie Cups

It's a nice thought, but there's no chance in hell a team would put out the potential for the nickname the "D-Cups."

Atlanta Traffic would have been good.

Apporpriate, probably not "good" though...

I bet you'd get people to actually watch the WNBA if you had a team called the D-Cups though. Float my idea to Stern, he's got plenty of time on his hands now that he doesn't have to worry about how to screw over small market teams in the playoffs when they're playing the Knicks like he did with the Pacers from 1994-2000

I think the Isiah Thomas era is the karma wheel spinning full circle on David Stern for the whole rigged Patrick Ewing lottery thing. I agree that Dream isn't as bad as Mercury (they should sell the rights to a car dealer and rename that team the Phoenix Ford/Lincoln/Mercury and give away a car at halftime of every game, that would be awesome). I think I would have been satisfied if they were called the Dreams, that even works unlike the Mercury(ie?)s.

I would think that the creation of the Ewing Theory would be ample vengeance for the Ewing Lottery.
The Isiah Thomas era is simply karma on Thomas for being a walking douchebag.

You know I love Simmons as much as the next guy, but I would think that a sports columnist's running joke wouldn't exactly measure up to a commissioner rigging a lottery so that the biggest market team could get the top prospect at their biggest position of need on the karma scale. Having that same franchise self destructed with moron moves while at the same time becoming a public embarrassment to the league with the whole Isiah sexually harassing that woman, Stephon Marbury railing interns, and James Dolan's general stupidity (legally speaking he made Anucha Brown-Sanders' case by firing her) aired on the national media.

Simmons' development of the Ewing theory, I agree, is insignificant for the most part.
the fact that it's true and the Knicks haven't won a title while having Ewing (or since drafting him), however, is not insignificant.

Thomas' problems I put down to karma for being a douchebag ballplayer and saying that if Larry Bird hadn't been white he'd have been just another basketball player.

Yeah, the Basketball Jesus smote his ass good.

The Ewing Theory isn't Simmons original idea. Read the original article, it was a reader's email, Simmons just takes credit for it now because its been so long since the original article on it that most people have forgotten that it wasn't his idea

And Apple and Microsoft get credit for popularizing ideas conceived and developed by others (you'd be surprised how many people think the iPod was the first portable .mp3 player). That's the way of the world dude.