The New Orleans Hornets are going to change their name to something actually fitting for the city. New owner (pending the rubber stamp from the league) Tom Benson echoed that again Monday.
How about something like… Jazz? That was the New Orleans teams’ name until it left for that other jazz music hotbed of Salt Lake City. (Read that last sentence again in a sarcastic tone.) So as talk of a possible name change has floated around the idea of New Orleans taking back the Jazz moniker has bubbled to the surface.
Not going to happen, David Stern said at the press conference announcing the 2014 All-Star Game going to New Orleans. Here is the quote, via The Times-Picayune.
That idea is now DOA. The team in Utah isn’t going to give it up. They now have a long history with it in Utah — how else to you think of Stockton and Malone? — and they are not going to surrender it.
But Stern is right, there are a lot of options. Just know that due to marketing and jersey concerns this is likely a two-year process — nothing changes next season, it would likely be the 2013-14 season when any switch occurs.