Defunct Basketball Team Names

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional men's basketball league, currently consisting of 30 teams in North America (29 in the United States and one in Canada).

The league began in New York City in 1946, as the Basketball Association of America (BAA). It adopted the name National Basketball Association (NBA) at the start of the 1949–50 season when it absorbed the National Basketball League (NBL).

At some point we will have posted about all the NBA teams' name origins. Some of them are fairly obvious; some are not. But an interesting side note is the now defunct basketball teams and their name origins.

There have been 15 defunct NBA franchises.

One of those defunct teams and names is the Providence Steamrollers. They were a BAA team based in Providence, Rhode Island. They were one of the original eleven Basketball Association of America teams, and they posted an all-time record of 46–122 (.274) before folding after three seasons.

The Steamrollers still hold the dubious NBA record for the fewest games won in a season with six, in the 1947–48 season.

During the 1947–48 season, the Steamrollers' coach Nat Hickey activated himself as a player for one game two days before his 46th birthday, setting a still-standing record as the oldest player in NBA history.

The team took its name from the NFL franchise that was also called the Providence Steamrollers. They won the NFL championship in 1928 and are the last NFL champion to no longer be in the league. The Providence Steam Roller (also referred to as the Providence Steam Rollers, the Providence Steamroller and the Providence Steamrollers) were a football  team from 1925 to 1931. Providence was the first New England team to win an NFL championship. Most of their home games were played in the small 10,000-seat stadium that was built for bicycle races called the Cycledrome.

The Providence team was established in 1916 by two staffers at the Providence Journal - sports-editor Charles Coppen and part-time sports-writer Pearce Johnson. During halftime of one game, Charles Coppen heard a spectator remark that the opposing Providence team was "getting steam-rolled." He liked that remark so much that he named his team the Steam Roller.

As of this writing, the Steamrollers remain the last professional sports franchise from one of the Big Four leagues to be based in Rhode Island.

One defunct team whose name has survived is the Denver Nuggets. The original Nuggets joined the NBL for the 1948–49 season, and then joined the NBA after the merger for the 1949–50 season. The Nuggets were the first major professional sports franchise in Colorado, and the first NBA franchise west of the Mississippi.

In 1950, the Nuggets were one of seven teams, including Anderson Packers, Chicago Stags, Sheboygan Red Skins, St. Louis Bombers, Washington Capitols, Waterloo Hawks, that dropped out of the National Basketball Association altogether.

When the Denver Rockets of the American Basketball Association (ABA) joined the NBA, a contest was held in 1974 to give the team a new nickname since the NBA already had the Houston Rockets. The "Nuggets" name, which referenced Colorados days of gold mining for nuggets, was selected for the new team.

The current Denver Nuggets also started out in the same venue as the original Nuggets, the Denver Auditorium Arena, playing there from 1967 to 1975. They now play their home games at Pepsi Center, which they share with the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League (NLL).

Sports Teams Names

Besides all the jargon of sports, many names of teams have unusual origins, and many terms in sports come from names. Here are some team name origins for hockey, football and baseball.

In the National Hockey League, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks got their name from Disney CEO Michael Eisner who named the team after the hit Disney hockey movie The Mighty Ducks.

When Businessman Charles Adams wanted his new franchise to have brown and yellow team colors to match his stores, and a name equated with strength and power, he ran a contest and the winning fan entry was the Boston Bruins in the early days featuring a bear/bruin.

The Buffalo team management held a contest and chose Sabres as fitting since team officials wanted a name not being used in the pros and something other than a buffalo/bison variation.

When the Flames were located in Atlanta, the name referenced the burning of the city in the Civil War. When the team moved to Calgary, management held a contest and the fans chose to keep the Flames name. The flame could now be considered a reference to Alberta's petroleum industry.

In the National Football League, when George Halas moved his oddly-named Decatur Staleys to Chicago in 1921, the Staleys played at Wrigley Field, the home of baseball’s Cubs. Halas thought that if the baseball tenants were Cubs, then his more rugged gridiron combatants should be known as the Bears.

Paul Brown chose Bengals as the team name for Cincinnati’s 1968 AFL expansion team because there had been earlier football teams in the city called the Bengals. The oldest Bengals were members of an earlier AFL in 1937, then competed as an independent club in 1938, then played in a new AFL from 1939-41 before the AFL merged with the NFL.

The Buffalo Bills nickname refers to William F. Cody, who was known as “Buffalo Bill.” Buffalo had a football team called the Bisons, but the city’s minor league baseball and hockey teams also had the same name. The football team held a contest to select a new nickname following the 1946 season. More than 4,500 entries were submitted and Bills beat out Bullets, Nickels and Blue Devils.

           

In Major League Baseball, one team name example is the 1961 expansion version of the Washington Senators, who were obviously named for the U.S. Senate in Washington D.C.

When they moved to Arlington, Texas in 1972, they took on the totally-Texas nickname Texas Rangers, referencing the famous Texas Ranger Division, the law enforcement agency that was created by Stephen F. Austin in 1823.

The aptly named Colorado Rockies became a new franchise into the MLB in 1993. The nickname "Rockies" is, of course, a reference to the Rocky Mountains which cover much of the western half of Colorado. The name Colorado Rockies had actually already been used by a National Hockey League team from 1976-1982. When that team relocated, they became the New Jersey Devils.

            

Minor league teams had been known as the Miami Marlins for several decades, referencing the marlin, a popular sport fish of the state. There were the Miami Marlins of the International League (1956-1960) and the Miami club of the Florida State League starting in 1963, who was known as the Miami Marlins during 1963-1970 and then again in 1982-1988.

The MLB team began to play as an expansion team in the 1993 season as the Florida Marlins When the major leagues expanded to the Miami area in 1993, the old nickname was revived but called by the state name of Florida Marlins. The Marlins moved into their new ballpark, Marlins Park, in 2012 which coincided with a change in the team colors/uniforms and name to the Miami Marlins.

The Marlins are the only team to win a World Series in their first two winning seasons (1997 and 2003); in fact, they are the only team to even make the playoffs in their first two winning seasons. In those two seasons, they managed to make a surprise run to the World Series, both times as heavy underdogs. They are also the only team to never lose a postseason series.

Check out all our sports names posts.

Super Bowl Teams 2019

In 2019, Super Bowl LIII will take place at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Falcons. This is the first Super Bowl hosted at the stadium, which opened in 2017, but this is the third Super Bowl that has been played in Atlanta. The Cowboys beat the Bills in the Georgia Dome in 1994 Super Bowl XXVIII. The Rams topped the Titans in 2000 in Super Bowl XXXIV.

This season's AFC Championship game was the New England Patriots versus the Kansas City Chiefs with the Pats coming out on top in overtime.

The NFC Championship game pitted the Los Angeles Rams against the New Orleans Saints in another overtime game where the Rams triumphed.

This year's Super Bowl is a rematch of Super Bowl XXXVI, in which the Patriots, led by second-year head coach Bill Belichick and backup quarterback Tom Brady, defeated the heavily favored Rams, who played in St. Louis at the time, on a last-second field goal.

Click each the team names on this post for origin stories on all these football teams.

Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and play their home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West division.



The franchise began in 1936 as the Cleveland Rams, located in Cleveland, Ohio. The team was founded by Ohio attorney Homer Marshman and player-coach Damon Wetzel, a former Ohio State star who also played briefly for the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Pirates.  The team's name choice - which sounds like it might be a team from a mountainous location rather than Cleveland - was rather arbitrary. Wetzel, who served as general manager, selected the "Rams", because his favorite college football team was the Fordham Rams from Fordham University, though Marshman also liked the name choice.

That team was part of the newly formed American Football League and finished the 1936 regular season in second place behind the league champion Boston Shamrocks.

After winning the 1945 NFL Championship Game, the franchise moved to Los Angeles, California in 1946, making way for the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference, and becoming the only NFL championship team to play the following season in another city.



The team made another move after the 1994 NFL season, leaving California and relocating in St. Louis, Missouri.

Five seasons after relocating, the team won Super Bowl XXXIV in a 23–16 victory over the Tennessee Titans. They appeared again in Super Bowl XXXVI, where they lost 20–17 to the New England Patriots.



At the end of the 2015 NFL season, the team filed notice with the NFL of its intent to move yet again. pursue a relocation back to Los Angeles. The move was approved by owners, and in January 2016 the Rams returned to Los Angeles for the 2016 NFL season.






The Rams franchise has won three NFL championships and is the only franchise to win championships while representing three different cities (Cleveland in 1945, Los Angeles in 1951, and St. Louis in 1999).

Atlanta Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons franchise began on June 30, 1965, when the NFL granted ownership to Rankin Smith Sr. who paid $8.5 million, the highest price in NFL history at the time for a franchise.

The Atlanta team received its nickname in August when Julia Elliott was selected from many people who suggested "Falcons" as the nickname for the new franchise. She wrote: "the Falcon is proud and dignified, with great courage and fight. It never drops its prey. It is deadly and has a great sporting tradition."

But professional football first came to Atlanta in 1962, when the American Football League (AFL) staged two preseason contests, and in 1964 when  the AFL held another exhibition game. In 1965, after the Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium (then known simply as Atlanta Stadium) was built, the city of Atlanta felt the time was right to start pursuing professional football.

Several groups independently applied for franchises in both the AFL and NFL. Some local businessmen were awarded an AFL franchise contingent upon acquiring exclusive stadium rights from city officials. That motivated the NFL to get serious and forced Atlanta officials to make a choice between the two leagues. They went with the NFL.

The NFL had planned to add two teams in 1967, but the competition with the AFL for Atlanta forced Atlanta to be added a year early in 1966. The second expansion team, the New Orleans Saints, joined the NFL as planned in 1967 as its sixteenth franchise.

New Orleans Saints

The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Saints currently compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The team was founded by John W. Mecom Jr., David Dixon, and the city of New Orleans on November 1, 1966.[7] The Saints began play in Tulane Stadium in 1967.

The name "Saints" is an allusion to November 1 being All Saints Day in the Catholic faith. The franchise was founded on November 1, 1966 and New Orleans has a large Catholic population. It also attributed to the spiritual song "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" which is associated with New Orleans jazz and is often sung by fans at games.

They played their home games in Tulane Stadium through the 1974 NFL season and then  moved to the new Louisiana Superdome (now called the Mercedes-Benz Superdome).


Except for minor modifications, the Saints' logo and uniforms have basically remained the same since the club debuted in 1967.

The team's logo is a fleur-de-lis which is a symbol of the City of New Orleans and of France's Royal Family, which included the House of Bourbon).

Their uniform design consists of gold helmets, gold pants, and either black or white jerseys.

Boston Red Sox

The name Red Sox was chosen by owner John I. Taylor after the 1907 season. It is a reference to the red socks (hose) in the team's uniform which began in 1908.

There is a tradition of using sox and stockings as part of a team's name. Using "Sox" for a team name had previously been done for the Chicago White Sox, but it was not official at first. Newspapers wanted a shorter, headline-friendly form of Stockings which was part of the official team name.

The team name "Red Sox" had actually been used as early as 1888 by a "colored" or Negro League team from Norfolk, Virginia.

The current Red Sox team is sometimes shortened to "Bosox" or "BoSox", a combination of "Boston" and "Sox" which is similar to the "ChiSox" in Chicago or the minor league "PawSox" of Pawtucket. Sportswriters sometimes refer to the Red Sox as the Crimson Hose and the Olde Towne Team.

Boston was not the first to be a "Red Stockings" team. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were members of the pioneering National Association of Base Ball Players and wore white knickers and red stockings. That team folded after the 1870 season and when a new team was wanted in Boston a few players and the "Red Stockings" nickname were brought there. This was a nickname and not a club names or registered trademark.

The Boston Red Stockings won four championships in the five seasons of the new National Association, the first professional league. In 1876, a new Cincinnati club joined the National League and they took back the "Red Stockings" nickname. The Boston team was referred to as the "Red Caps."

In 1901, the competing American League established a club in Boston that wore dark blue stockings and had no official nickname. They were referred to by fans and newspapers as simply "Boston", "Bostonians," "the Bostons," the "Americans," "Boston Americans" or as the "American Leaguers."

Confusingly, in the 1908 season the AL team shirts featured a red stocking across the front labeled "BOSTON" along with red stockings and white caps, and the NL team also wore red stockings and red caps with an old-English "B."

The Nationals reverted to their red trim and took on the nickname of Braves when James E. Gaffney, became club president in 1912. Gaffney was part of the Tammany Hall political organization which was named after an American Indian chief and used an Indian image as its symbol, hence the "Braves." That nickname has persisted - despite controversy about its stereotyping of Native Americans - and the name followed the team when they moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and then to Atlanta in 1966.

We find the current "RED SOX" appearing in 1912 with the opening of Fenway Park.

The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division and have won nine eight World Series championships, most recently this year in their defeat of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Part of the Boston Red Sox story is their long championship drought nicknamed the "Curse of the Bambino" because it was said to have started when the team traded Babe Ruth to the rival New York Yankees. There was an 86-year wait before the team got its sixth World Championship in 2004. The team still has an intense rivalry with the Yankees.

Red Sox fan merchandise