Fresh Loaf

Atlanta looking for WNBA team
By Charles Odum
AP Sports Writer

ATLANTA – Atlanta City Council president Lisa Borders says 1,100 ticket pledges demonstrate ‘’significant and fervent interest” from local fans in bringing a WNBA team to the city for the 2008 season.”That’s a significant number of people saying ‘We want to do this,”’ Borders said of those who have pledged to purchase tickets. ”There is no team yet in Atlanta, so to have that type of interest on a concept of having a team brought to the city I think is unmatched.”

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That’s great news (and, I’m sure, totally unrelated to Borders’ mayoral aspirations). Usually there are a few more steps between significant and fervent interest, but we made the leap in no time. So as we speed toward feral interest, it’s probably a good time to start thinking about a mascot.

I love how startup-league teams tend to distinguish themselves by using nebulous, often-singular mascots rather than the traditional multiple-animal or minority-human-group style. Within the last five years, we’ve been graced with Arena Football’s Georgia Force and the ABA’s Atlanta Vision, but Atlanta’s more well-known plural mascots still make us look dated compared with the forward-thinking Connecticut Sun, New York Liberty or Chicago Sky. It’s not about the individual Thrashers, Braves or Hawks; it’s about the collective Thrasher, Brave and Hawk. And even then they’re too concrete. I’m thinking more like the Atlanta Thrashing, the Atlanta Bravery or the Atlanta Concept of Flight. But since the Atlanta pro-sports fat cats likely wouldn’t warm up to such progressive mascots for existing teams, we have to hope for the WNBA, a league that welcomes conceptual mascotry. Any suggestions?

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Tags: basketball.