Oklahomans obsessed with picking NBA team name

By Jenni Carlson

Published: July 16, 2008

Deane Wymer is a busy man.

An accountant who has owned his own firm for more than four decades, he oversees branches in Enid and Fairview. He meets with clients. He manages employees.

But these past few weeks, he has poured himself into a side project.

Coming up with a name for OKC's NBA team.

"It has to be something positive,” Wymer said.

Count him among the legions of Oklahomans who are moonlighting as marketers.

Nickname fever is sweeping the state, and no one is immune. With the impending arrival of Oklahoma's first major-league sports franchise — one that's leaving its name, colors and history behind — folks from Guymon to Gotebo are talking about what the team should be called.

Who among us hasn't thought about it, talked about it, debated about it?

This has become fodder for the casual observer every bit as much as the hard-core fan. The debate is just as likely to rage in a Sunday school class as at the local watering hole.

Heck, the obsession extends to The Oklahoman. Our fair newspaper conducted a 64-name bracket competition within hours of the relocation vote, and even though we've told all of you that we have no sway in the naming, you still keep calling and writing with your suggestions.

Oklahomans are obsessed.

Why?

Why are we so fascinated by the name? Why are we so invested in the outcome?

"People are very proud that this team is coming to Oklahoma,” Bob Blackburn said. "The name is very important.”

Blackburn isn't a sports guy, but he has studied the state's history for decades. The executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society believes that Oklahomans are proud people but that their pride hasn't always extended to the state as a whole.

We've been proud of individuals such as Will Rogers, Mickey Mantle and Garth Brooks. We've been proud of our hometown or our heritage.

"There's a bit of a lack of pride in the general history,” Blackburn said.

That inferiority dates back to the Dust Bowl, the poverty that it wrought and the shame that it left. Those same issues surfaced again during the oil bust.

But in this NBA team, people see a symbol of progress, a sign of the good times.

"This basketball team is one of the crown jewels that we're all wearing around,” Blackburn said.

Oklahomans want a name befitting such a gem.

On that, there is consensus.

What we can't seem to agree on, though, is exactly what that perfect nickname is.

Over the past few months, Toby Rowland has taken hundreds of calls about the team name on his sports talk show on KREF. The first wave came a couple months ago when it looked like Clay Bennett and Co. would leave the Sonics nickname in Seattle.

"That's all we talked about on the radio show for it seemed like forever,” Rowland said.

Some were serious, and some were absurd. Callers suggested wacky nicknames like Weathermen and Vortex, and everyone got a good laugh out of it.

But then, folks in other parts of the country started throwing out equally goofy nicknames and the tenor changed.

"People started curling up — ‘Oh, yeah? You want to fight about it?' ” Rowland said. "It's kind of like the old adage about, ‘I can say whatever I want about my family, but you'd better not.' ”

The mood has changed again in recent weeks.

"Everybody's nervous now,” said Rowland, also the weekend sports anchor on KWTV News9. "People are just afraid of how it might be perceived.

"I bet when Sooners was announced, it seemed pretty silly. I bet when Hoosiers was announced, it seemed pretty silly. But it became part of the lexicon over time.”

Rowland chuckled.

"If you think about it, they're all silly.”

That's what Deane Wymer had started to believe. The accountant from Fairview made a list of nicknames, and even though he had almost two dozen, none suited him.

One after another, he crossed names off the list. A few, such as Okies, were even names he liked.

"We may take pride in being Okies,” Wymer said, "but that's not the image we want to portray to the rest of the world. That name's anything but positive to the rest of the world.”

Wymer had nearly given up his search for the perfect name. Then this week, he was thinking about the state's aeronautical history from the early days of Will Rogers and Wiley Post to the current days of astronauts, and that's when he hit on his nickname suggestion.

Orbits.

"It seemed it was a logical, positive image,” he said. "It has to be something positive.”

That seems to be about the only thing Oklahomans can agree on when it comes to the nickname fever that's sweeping the state.

Editors note: Deane Wymer was incorrectly identified as a certified public accountant

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