most nba teams logos are pretty obvious, the Washinton Wizards is a wizard, the Indianapolis Pacers is a P with a basketball in it, but the Blazers looks like a six next to a upside down six, what is it???
It’s a stylized P-B, for Portland Blazers. While “Blazers” is short for “Trailblazers”, I don’t know if the team ever officially used the full word as its name. Ditto Seattle Sonics/“Supersonics”.
cmkeller, is that a guess, or is it fact? if fact, do you have some sort of source?
that would have to be a really stylized P-B.
for anyone who doesn’t know the logo: www.nba.com/blazers
i checked the history, and found nothing about the logo. i hoped the team would have been conveniently started in 1969, but no, it’s 1970. close, though. maybe the team was built in 69, and didn’t enter the NBA until 70.
i don’t know. but i really don’t think those are initials.
and as far as the name trail blazers goes… yes, they do use it officially. that is their name. it is casually that they use blazers.
I can buy the explanation that it’s a stylized p and b. They might have picked those letters also because the first name of the company that owned the Trail Blazers went by the name Pro Basketball, Inc.
It’s a P blazing a trail.
It’s a spinning basketball.
A stylized P and B? Maybe in lowercase letters.
Maybe it isn’t anything and just looked cool to whoever made the logo.
What is the Bass triangle supposed to be?
Notice that there are FIVE lines each in the red and black swooshs. Clearly these are meant to be symbolic of fingers.
It’s the stylized hands af a Native American and an African American coming together in mutual peace and brotherhood. See, 'cause Portland’s out West where the Injuns live, and most basketball players are African American.
Um, this team isn’t from Portland MAINE, is it? If so, I’ll come up with an alternate explanation.
– Uke the Sports Fiend
Kilgore Trout:
Yup. I just know that the first time I saw it, that’s what my mind told me it meant.
Pink Slinky:
That’s what I meant.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Stylized, hmmm.
Does stylized mean backwards?
I went through a book entitled “Rip City: A Quarter Century with the Portland Trail Blazers”. It has a lot of information on the development of the team, the players, the radio announcer, the nickname “Rip City”, statistics, photographs.
However, it doesn’t say what the logo means.
The logo has been used continuously since 1970. And, in the early years of the franchise, the team name was usually written out on media guides in lower case letters that sort of looked like a “b” and a “p” depicted in the logo.
I can’t believe no Blazers fan has turned up here to answer this question. Does no one in Oregon read this board?