Thunder mascot to be a bison; to be unveiled against the Hornets Feb. 17

From NewsOK.com (thanks to MartzMimic for the heads up):

“The Oklahoma City Thunder mascot will be a bison and will be unveiled at the Thunder’s Feb. 17 home game against the New Orleans Hornets, sources have confirmed.”

I’m happy. As soon as I heard the name was going to be Thunder, this is what I thought an appropriate mascot would be. It made sense, it tied to the state and it could be really cool. I have a feeling that the name will be something like Bolt (Bolt the Bison sounds good, right?), and I’m relieved this is the direction they decided to go. They’ll have to be careful not to steal Bennie the Bull’s look and make sure they have a good design that’s original and clever. Let’s just hope they stick with traditional bison colors and make the “base color” brown, gray or black and not Thunder blue fur with an orange/red nose and yellow horns. That would be bad.

And if you’re wondering what the difference between a bison and a buffalo is, a bison is what we traditionally think of as a buffalo. A bison is the big, hairy animal that’s found in the Midwest. A buffalo is traditionally found in Africa and Asia. So we’ve got the correct term here. Take that Colorado!