The Dallas Mavericks Change Their Chinese Name from "Little Cows" to "Lone Range Heroes"; Lets Take A Gander At Some Other Chinese NBA Team Names
NOTE: All Chinese characters in this blog appear as “??” due to WordPress, like most other technology, being a confirmed racist that believes if you blog for an American company you better blog in American.
Its about damn time. You can’t have a team called “Little Cows” in a league that has a team called the Bulls. It’s bad for morale. This name change prompted me to do some research on other Chinese NBA team names and they seem to fall into three categories.
Boring direct translations:
Suns – Sun
Kings – King
Awkward Sounding Literal Translations:
Clippers – Fast Boats
Spurs – Horse Thorns
Rockets – Fire Arrows
Lakers – Lake people
The only image that comes to mind when I think of “Lake People” is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, 
which honestly wouldn’t be the worst mascot. Much better than some other NBA mascots I can think of *cough* *cough* “Stuff the Magic Dragon”. Fucking weirdo.
Chinese Characters That Try to Sound Out the English Name AKA Transliteration:
Knicks – ??? “Ni ke si”
Celtics – ???? “Kai er te” person.
This one needs some work. By no stretch of the imagination does Celtic sound like “KaiErTe”. Would much prefer if we went by ????(The Irishmen), ?? (the leperchauns) or even the ???? (Green Midgets).
Names That Are a bit of a stretch
Raptors – ??Ferocious Dragon
Ok China we know you love your Dragons but this isn’t the middle ages. Paleontologists have known since the 1800s that the big ass bones people were digging up did not belong to Dragons but rather “Extinct Dinosaurs”, which is what you should change the name to if you give a single fuck about science.
Wizards – ?? Genius
And last but not least, my personal favorite,
Pacers – ??? Pedestrian
What an absolute joke. Doesn’t matter if we’re using it as a noun (a person walking along a road) or an adjective (lacking inspiration or excitement; dull), Pedestrian leaves a lot to be desired as a team name. If you’re like me and had no idea why their english name is the Pacers in the first place Wikipedia tells me that it is “a combination of the state’s rich history with the harness racing pacers and the pace car used for the running of the Indianapolis 500.” Why they haven’t made their Chinese name the “Race Horses” or “Race Cars” is beyond me.
Anyways, these Chinese team names are cute and all but not sure anything will ever top the fact that the entire Chinese media refers to Giannis Antetokounmpo as “Letter Bro” because they can’t even begin to imagine translating his name. He seems ecstatic about that.
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P.S.Anthony Davis is known as “Thick Brow Brother” in China. Not making that up.