The Lakers Have No Lakes: 5 Team Names That Stopped Making Sense (And 2 That Accidentally Got Better)

Team names are souvenirs. When a franchise moves, the name usually comes along in the boxes — and sometimes what made perfect sense in one city becomes gibberish in the next. Here are the 5 most gloriously out-of-place names in American sports, plus 2 that relocation accidentally improved.

5. Memphis Grizzlies

Born in Vancouver in 1995 and named for the grizzly bear native to British Columbia — after the first choice, "Mounties," was blocked by an objection from the actual Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Six years later the team moved to Memphis, where the nearest wild grizzly lives roughly 1,500 miles away. Tennessee has black bears. It does not have grizzlies. The name is now a zoology error with a jersey.

4. Indianapolis Colts

The Baltimore Colts were named in a 1947 fan contest for Maryland's horse-racing heritage — Pimlico, the Preakness, the whole breeding industry. The name made so much sense it hurt. Then came the night of March 28-29, 1984: 15 Mayflower moving vans loaded up the team's entire existence in 8 hours and rolled out of Baltimore in the dark on a snowy, sleet-slicked night — each truck taking a different route to dodge the Maryland State Police, because the state Senate had just passed a bill to seize the team by eminent domain. Indianapolis got a wonderful franchise and a name about another state's racetrack.

3. Calgary Flames

The darkest origin on the list: the Atlanta Flames, born 1972, were named for the burning of Atlanta — General Sherman's 1864 march. An expansion team named after the destruction of its own city. When the franchise moved to Calgary in 1980, the new owners reportedly kept the name because it accidentally fit an oil town — gas flares over the prairie. A name commemorating a Civil War inferno, quietly rebranded as a petroleum reference. Nobody blinked.

2. Los Angeles Lakers

The purest one. Minneapolis: Land of 10,000 Lakes, home of the Lakers from 1947, George Mikan dynasty and all. Los Angeles, where they moved in 1960: a city famous for almost everything except lakes. Sixty-five years of championships later, the name is so iconic nobody remembers it's a Minnesota geography lesson — which is exactly what makes it perfect.

1. Utah Jazz

The undisputed champion. The New Orleans Jazz, born 1974, carried the perfect name — the city that invented the music. Five years later the franchise moved to Salt Lake City, and the writer David Halberstam summed up "Utah Jazz" as a rare contradiction in terms. Here's the kicker: it could have been fixed. In 2012, New Orleans' new NBA owner wanted the Jazz name back for his team. Utah's owner refused flatly — "We are the Utah Jazz. And we always will be." New Orleans became the Pelicans instead, and the most beautifully wrong name in sports stayed put.

Honorable Mentions

The **Los Angeles Dodgers** are named for Brooklyn pedestrians dodging trolleys in the 1890s — a name that moved in 1958 to the city that killed the streetcar. The **Tennessee Oilers** existed for 2 full seasons (1997-98) — an oil-boom name in a state with essentially no oil — before mercifully becoming the Titans. The **Arizona Cardinals** are a trick entry: the name isn't the bird, it's a color — from faded used jerseys a founder bought in 1901 and declared "cardinal red" — so it's equally wrong everywhere. And the **Hornets** pulled off a name round trip: Charlotte's name spent 11 years in New Orleans before the two cities swapped identities back in 2013-14 — proof it can be done, Utah.

The Two That Got Better

Relocation occasionally improves a name. The Fort Wayne **Zollner Pistons** were named for owner Fred Zollner's piston factory — and in 1957 they moved to Detroit, the Motor City, where the name became accidentally perfect. And the second Washington Senators became the **Texas Rangers** in 1972, trading a generic government name for actual legendary lawmen. Somewhere, the Utah Jazz takes notes and does nothing.