The best part of the NBA year, the Play-offs, finally begins today. But there’s one non-play-off team that’s embarking on a new phase, as the New Orleans Hornets have officially rebranded themselves as the Pelicans.

It’s not quite the bird you’d expect to front a professional sports team (you wonder if “Magpies” would pass muster as a mascot if it was invented today). But the pelican does have an association with the famed Louisiana city, and as the copious explanatory notes claim, pelicans “have been revered throughout history from Egypt to Australia and all of Christendom”.

Many will remember that New Orleans inherited their team from the former Charlotte Hornets, so a change in identity to something more local was hardly out of order. That said, this was hardly the way that American sports teams operated in the past. The best-known one involved another New Orleans basketball team, also named for one its most famous local institutions. Struggling financially, they were moved to Salt Lake City in 1979, becoming the contradiction-in-terms Utah Jazz. Here’s hoping the Pelicans fare better.