New Orleans Pelicans

The New Orleans Pelicans are one of the NBA’s younger identities, but their name carries centuries of meaning. The franchise arrived in 2002 when the Charlotte Hornets relocated to Louisiana, played as the Hornets through the 2000s, and rebranded in 2013 as the Pelicans to root the club in its home state. The brown pelican is Louisiana’s state bird and a long-standing emblem of care and resilience. On the state flag and seal, a mother pelican wounds her breast to feed her chicks with her own blood — the “pelican in her piety”, a medieval Christian symbol of sacrifice and protection. With Louisiana’s French Catholic heritage, that image felt natural. It is an emblem that speaks to duty, community and survival.

The symbol is not only poetic; it is lived history. Brown pelicans vanished from Louisiana in the 1960s, victims of pesticide use, before restoration programmes and habitat protections brought them back by the 1990s. Their return became a local parable: a species on the brink made whole again. In a state tested by hurricanes, floods and economic shocks, the pelican’s comeback mirrors the wider story of recovery.

New Orleans itself is one of America’s great port cities. Founded by the French in 1718, it sat at the hinge of an empire: the mouth of the Mississippi, gateway from the interior to the Gulf and the wider world. The city’s culture grew from French and Spanish rule, West and Central African traditions, Caribbean links and Native roots — a blend that shaped language, religion, food and music. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase folded the region into the United States, and in 1815 Andrew Jackson’s force defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, a moment that fixed the city in national memory. Across the 19th century, New Orleans became a trading and shipbuilding hub; in its streets and dance halls, jazz took form. Creole and Cajun cooking, Catholic feast days, second-line parades and Mardi Gras all knit together into a civic style found nowhere else.

Sport marks the city’s recoveries as well as its celebrations. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 flooded neighbourhoods and displaced families. The NBA club decamped to Oklahoma City for two seasons as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets, returning home in 2007–08. (It is worth remembering too that New Orleans had lost a team before — the original New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah in 1979.) The Saints winning the Super Bowl in 2010 and the basketball team’s rebirth as the Pelicans in 2013 became civic milestones: signs that the city’s heartbeat had steadied again.

The Pelicans’ crest is one of the league’s most distinctive. A stylised pelican spreads its wings over a basketball beneath a fleur-de-lis crown — the Bourbon lily that runs through the city’s flags, ironwork and uniforms. Navy, gold and red give the badge weight and warmth: a nod to French colours and to the pageantry of New Orleans itself. It is dignified, local and instantly readable.

On the court, the modern story is still being written. Chris Paul led the franchise’s earliest high points while it still wore Hornets teal. Anthony Davis powered play-off runs after the rebrand before leaving for Los Angeles. The new era rests on Zion Williamson’s explosive talent, backed by Brandon Ingram and a deep young core. The hope is simple: turn the state’s habit of resilience into trophies.

The New Orleans Pelicans are more than a basketball team. They are Mississippi commerce and French Quarter parades, jazz notes and Creole kitchens, the shock of Katrina and the stubborn work of return, CP3’s craft and Zion’s lift. Their badge is a pelican with wings wide — a mother bird defending her nest — a reminder that in Louisiana, pride, sacrifice and recovery always take flight.