No No No No No No No No Thunder

I liked the Seattle Supersonics. I liked Shawn Kemp and his egregious yelling and dunking and Gary Payton and his condomesque nickname. Their retro space needle-in-the-skyline jerseys always trumped the Nuggets Tetris version. With the addition of Kevin Durant and a bounty of other young stars, I thought this was a dangerous team built for the future even in the loaded western conference. Now everyone is familiar with evil mastermind Clay Bennett and his fall from grace with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz when he prompted the relocation of the Sonics from Seattle to OK City. The villain has struck again with a blow that no casual sports fan can overlook. He's decided to go ahead and name the OK City squad the Thunder. I understand that most of these guys are under 25 but that's no reason to name them after a minor league baseball team. Before you bust out your old AC/DC albums (which Bennett has already done at the unfurling of the new name) and try to protect the new moniker let me propose a list of names that should be considered for the '11 season when Durant will have to decide between staying put or leaving for more aptly named pastures.

I've devised categories for the new names. There's the Starbucks Espresso in honor of the refined ex-owner, the Homer which represents names that apply to the OK City region, and the Randy Ratio bracket which are stupid names that I would probably give to my fantasy football team. Let the naming begin.

Starbucks Espresso
1. The Renaissance - Any time you can use a 300 year period to describe your team I say go for it. This sets the team up perfectly to acquire Leandro Barbosa in a few years, force the nickname Donatello on him, and let the double entendres abound.

2. The Aristocrats- Probably wouldn't be popular with the 10,000 farmers going to see games every night, but wouldn't Bob Saget telling raunchy jokes at half time be a nice upgrade from teenage hula hoopers?

3. The Suits- Clay really sticks it to the man, er I mean the people.

Homer
1.The Twisters- I don't know how this can't be the name of the team. They can actually represent their team name with a tangible mascot (I swear if they use the lightning bolt to represent the Thunder someone's gotta shit on their PR dept) and isn't Oklahoma renowned for their 'nados? Maybe they could promote the team with a Helen Hunt autograph day!

2. The Solar Energy- It's time to get back to the Sonics roots and go green baby. I like the possible matchup between them and the Suns for better celestial representative. The team was very close to being named the Energy anyways, at least this sends an ecological message too.

3. Wagonwheel- I think it sounds like a Frisbee team.

4. Hurricanes- There's already a precedent for intra sport team name similarities i.e. Giants and Cardinals.

Randy Ratio
1. X-Factor- Who wouldn't want to refer to their own teams players as the X-men? This would leave to cool giveaways and Durant would have an automatic trademark celebration.

2. Vengeance- Rub it in Tim McVeigh's face.

3. The High Fliers- It has an And1 feel that could attract mega athletes and dunkers leading to great youtube mixes. Everything I like.

4. KRUMP- It's time for clown dancing to emerge into the mainstream and for the hip hop culture to pervade the game again. Every game would seem like a prolonged half-time show.

So I don't really think any of these names are that cool except for X-Factor, but I do think that the NBA whiffed big time with the Thunder. We'll see in the next month if the jerseys materialize into something sleek and desirable or if the mascot just fades away like the poop cloud it's destined to look like.