How the Oakland Ballers Got Their Name

It's not too often that a new franchise is born and there is a deeper meaning to the team's name. With the Colorado Rockies, it's because of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Arizona Diamondbacks were named after a snake native to the region. The Las Vegas Golden Knights got their name because Nevada is the largest gold-producing state in the country. There's a connection with each of these, but it's not personal. 

The Ballers are different. 

Sports have a way of connecting people from all walks of life. When Oakland Ballers co-founder Paul Freedman relocated to Oakland as a teenager, it was through sports that he found acceptance in his new community. In an interview earlier this week, he called Oakland sports fans "the most accepting culture in the history of sports." You can tell that the sports teams in the Bay Area--not just the A's--mean a lot to him in hearing him speak. 

When Paul came to Oakland in High School, that is where he met Bryan Carmel, the other co-founder of the Ballers. Their location for the interview we recorded via Zoom was in Bryan's parent's house, the same place that the duo sat and watched Terrell Owens' famous catch in the 1998 NFL playoffs. Bryan also name-dropped Golden State Warriors legend Šarūnas Marčiulionis, which is the mark of someone that watched Dubs basketball well before they started collecting rings. 

Bryan and Paul are big-time Bay Area sports fans, and that is their bond. "It's in the welcomeness of the sports community that I [Paul] felt bonded. I started to share the identity of the A's and I felt welcomed. I wasn't the new kid anymore, because I was rooting for the right team." 

In listening to Bryan and Paul talk, as well as some of the other speakers at Tuesday's introductory press conference, including rap legend Mistah F.A.B., that is what everyone involved in this project is trying to preserve. That sense of community. That sense of belonging. They don't want that to leave town when the A's do. 

It's in that same spirit that the co-founders landed on a name for the new franchise. 

Bryan told the story on Tuesday. "We had a very good friend from High School named Bobby Winslow, and Bobby was my good friend, but Bobby was Paul's best friend. They were inextricably linked. Bobby passed away right after we graduated college. He'd just moved to New York, he was running in Central Park, and he had an irregular heart condition that nobody knew about, and he died. It was awful and devastating for all of us.

"Bobby used to call himself a 'baller,' and Paul and some of our other friends actually got a basketball court in Berkeley right off Hearst named 'Bobby Winslow Court'. When you go there, there's a plaque that says 'I'm still a baller.' When we came up with this idea that we were going to start a baseball team, and what are we going to call it, we were noodling on different names with the B's, which was very funny to us for a lot of reasons. It could be the B's, and it could be the Ballers. We've got to do it for Bobby." 

Paul then told the story of when Bobby was 12 (before Paul had moved to Oakland), he won a chance to throw out the first pitch at an Oakland A's game and in a packed house, he throws a strike right down the heart of the plate and the crowd goes wild. "I have probably seen that video tape like 700 times. Anytime we didn't have anything to do at his house, Bobby would go 'you wanna watch the video of me throwing a strike at the Oakland Coliseum?'"

The contrast behind the Bay Area natives from the A's ownership group and the Ballers co-founders is hard to ignore. The Ballers are trying to legitimately create lasting memories for the community and bring people together, while John Fisher is leaving The Town because he thinks he can make more money in Las Vegas--families and their memories be damned. 

To that point, the co-founders said that they took Bobby's mom to the basketball court that is named after her son in July, and when they told her what they were going to name the team, she said, "how are you going to make money?" Their response? "That is a question we're asking ourselves." These guys are truly in this because they feel that it's the best thing for the community and they'll figure out the rest later. 

They also said that Oakland retailer Oaklandish had already run out of Ballers hats a day after the team was announced. In the time since, Oaklandish has been taking pre-orders for the hottest merch in town. 

Paul and Bryan are keeping baseball in Oakland, and they're doing it with a tribute to their friend whom they lost along the way.