Don't trade for this guy!

The California Bay Area is known for its lame mascots. The Oakland A's mascot is an elephant called Stomper. The San Francisco Giants have a seal for a mascot. His name is Lou ... Lou Seal. For real. The 49ers have a gold miner as their mascot. Ok, that's not lame. His name? Sourdough Sam. Ah, yes, the lameness. The San Jose Earthquakes (a major league soccer team, who knew there was major league soccer?) have a big, blue dude named Q. The Oakland Raiders have no mascot. Thank goodness, cuz that'd be just one more thing that they'd suck at.

But of all the teams, the team with the lamest mascot by far has to be the Golden State Warriors. For exhibit A, check out the picture to the right. What is that thing, you ask? That is Thunder or if you'd prefer to call him by his full name, ThunderBolt!

Thunder has been the Warriors mascot since June 19, 1997. But today, he's out of a job. The owners of the Golden State Warriors in their infinite wisdom have determined that having a mascot with the name of another team in the league is just plain a bad idea. And so, Thunder had to go. It's not known when his last game as mascot will be, but I have a hard time believing he'll be in the stands for the preseason game between the Thunder and the Warriors on Saturday.

Golden State management has stated that they'd be willingly to trade Thunder to the Thunder. I'm not sure what we could trade them, other than perhaps a bout of diarrhea, that would be of equal value.

Seriously. One could ask what thunder has to do with being a warrior. I'd like to think that the creation of the Oklahoma City Thunder is just what the doctor ordered for Golden State: an opportunity to come up with a more appropriate mascot. And hopefully it won't be something blue. What, does everyone in the bay area have an obsession with the Blue Man Group?

While on the topic of mascots, the Thunder had better not blow it and introduce something lame like this guy. They had better do something cool, like Thor, and not something lame, such as a thunder cloud.