New ABA Team in Quebec - Team Name

[canuckrefguy]

Thought this would be good for a chuckle......

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MONTREAL — The owner of a new American Basketball Association team has stirred up a storm in Quebec but is sticking to his decision to use a cartoon frog in the team's logo.

Depending on the outcome of an on-line vote, the team, which starts play in November, will be named either Kebekwa or the Quebec Jumping Frogs.

In his 49 years, Quebec City economic adviser and entrepreneur Réal Bourassa has been called “frog” plenty of times, he said.

“I've heard sometimes, ‘Hi, frog,' or ‘Hi, froggie,' but it has never been an insult to me,” he said from his home in Quebec. “I feel good with the fact that maybe someone will say, ‘You are not shy to be a frog.' My answer will be ... ‘I may be a frog, but I am proud to be a frog.' '' Mr. Bourassa purchased the team on March 31, 2004. Immediately, he went to public-relations companies in search of a proper name and logo.

The answer he got, he said, was go with the Frogs — although he was warned that the name might provoke or shock “nationalist” Quebeckers.

And so it has. Mr. Bourassa has been criticized by a sports columnist who said “frogs” is considered a racist insult everywhere in North America. In Montreal's La Presse Wednesday, Réjean Tremblay told Mr. Bourassa that “Quebec City is the capital of the only French state in the Americas.”

“The word ‘frog' is the ultimate insult in Canada,” Mr. Tremblay wrote. “When an anglophone wants to show contempt or meanness, he uses the word ‘frog.' ” A number of French blogs also slammed the choice of Jumping Frogs.

One blogger described it a real insult to the French language and Quebeckers. Another said the marketing people who came up with the two names “were probably brain-dead or they smoked some good stuff.”

Mr. Bourassa, who also has a 15-year-old son, says he's also received about a dozen e-mails that rail against the name. Some are aggressive. One was a death threat, but he said he's not concerned.

“I can't understand that in 2006, you are not able to make a difference between an insult and a joke. I think that you, I, everyone in Canada and in Quebec, are intelligent, mature adults and we are able to see the difference.”

But Mr. Bourassa said about 80 of the roughly 100 e-mails he has received have praised his courage.

He said other names suggested for the team were the Quebec Dunkers and the Quebec Cannon.

Mr. Bourassa said he expected the winning team name to be announced at the end of the month.

There are more than 60 basketball teams in the ABA, including teams from Montreal and Vancouver.

It is a men's professional league founded in 1999, in order to revive a defunct basketball league of the same name that had been absorbed into the NBA in 1976.