San Diego Rockets

I read something once that said that because San Diego considered itself a city on the rise, they chose "Rockets" to represent the city rocketing to the sky.

 

You know, I wondered the same thing too. Were the NASA build before the Rockets moved to Houston?

Edit:

Okey, so JSC was build in 1961, Rockets was move to Houston in 1970, so was that a part of the consideration?

 

Nickname:
Rockets was chosen in a contest due to San Diego's motto, "A City in Motion" in addition it was the manufacturing site of the Atlas rockets, used by NASA.

http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nba/sdrock/sdrockets.html

 

i can't think of a team moving to a city with a more fitting name than the san diego rockets moving to houston....

though, if the edmonton oilers had moved to houston in the late 90's, after the relocation of our football team to tennessee, that would have run an awful close second!

 

i remember bill talking during a game saying when the league was expanding there were several teams joining, including san diego, and they hat picked their names. i'm gonna be looking though.

 

I was stationed in San Diego when they got the team. The way I remember ...they just had a contest and picked a name.
I might add,,in those days if you wanted to see an NBA game you had to pay and go to the games.
We didnt have any piss ant fans who only complained and never went to a game.
Houston was very fortunate to get players like Calvin, Rudy T, Mike Newlin, Elvin Hayes, etc. that made NBA ball stick in Htown.. The NBA wasnt all that popular at the time.

 

I watched lots of San Diego Rockets game - courtside, front row seats. I was doing my internship & first year residency training at UCSD and my wife worked for KGB radio (home of the San Diego "chicken"). The station had lots of complimentary tickets to Rockets, Chargers and Padres games. None of the DJ's wanted them so we went to oodles of games. Since I was making $300/month during those days, those games were a real treat.

Been a diehard Rox fan ever since.

D R

 

Nice colors, green and gold are the first colors I think of when I hear the name Rockets, looks more like an Irish beer label.

 

Yep. I was born in San Diego when my father was writing the Tech Manual for the Atlas.