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What does Pokémon have to do with NBA teams? Not a whole lot except for some resemblance between character names and nicknames, but there’s no doubt that this art project that attaches one to each franchise is extremely cool and quite fun to watch.
What’s the logic behind it? Well, you don’t need to dive in that deep. The 76ers got Ninetales because they have a number as their name; The San Antonio Sprouts, the New York Kicks and the Houston Rockets turning into Team Rockets follows the same logic: More or less the same letters to follow, making the similarities click.
It’s interesting to see and probably quite annoying for Seattle people to see the Sonics get Onix while the new version of the team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, get Pikachu as their logo for the “Celadon City” Thunder.
This isn’t the first time the worlds of NBA players and Pokémon have crossed paths. The Tumblr blog PocketBallers has made a few hundred cards depicting NBA players as you would a Pokémon characters, with attributes being measured on a number-scale and given special abilities according to what the player usually does on the floor.
This new NBA-Pokémon might not match the Pocketballers one in its depth, but visually it is just as great to glance over.