Jeff notes that the A’s are moving again. They’ll be the first ever MLB franchise to have called four cities home (Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, and now Las Vegas). Perhaps the lack of rootedness arises from the fact that they have the most generic possible name for a sports team: the Athletics.
There are only two other unambiguous cases of Big Four professional sports teams playing in four or more different cities, both in the NBA, but there are a number of other unusual cases as well. Here’s my best attempt at putting together a list of the currently active major professional sports franchises that have been located in four or more cities.
In the NBA:
- The Hawks’ franchise has played in five cities: Buffalo, Moline, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Atlanta.
- The Kings’ franchise has played in four cities: Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Sacramento.
- The Spurs’ franchise is an odd case. They started in Dallas, then played one season where they split time between Fort Worth and Lubbock. That failed, and they went back to Dallas. Now they’re in San Antonio.
- You could also count the Nets’ franchise, depending on how you define “city.” They’ve played in Teaneck, Piscataway, East Rutherford, and Newark in New Jersey, and Commack, West Hempstead, Uniondale, and Brooklyn in New York. You could say that’s all New York for sports-market purposes, or count it as eight cities, or something in between (New Jersey, Long Island, and Brooklyn, perhaps).
In the NHL:
- The Devils’ franchise has played in four cities, if you count the two in New Jersey as separate: Kansas City, Denver, East Rutherford, and Newark.
- The Hurricanes’ franchise kind of counts. They began as the New England Whalers in Boston, then in West Springfield while their arena was being built in Hartford. Now they’re in Raleigh.
- The Coyotes’ franchise has played in Winnipeg, Phoenix, Glendale, and Tempe, but that should probably just count as two.
In the NFL:
- The Cardinals’ franchise is unusual, having been around in one form or another since 1898, well before the NFL was founded. The simple answer is they have played in three cities: Chicago, St. Louis, and Phoenix. But they played part of one season in Pittsburgh during World War II, when they merged with the Steelers. They also have the same Arizona caveat as the Coyotes, having played in both Glendale and Tempe.
- The Rams’ franchise began in Cleveland, moved to Los Angeles, then to St. Louis, and then back to Los Angeles. In the second part of their first stint in Los Angeles, though, they played in Anaheim, so if that counts as separate cities, as it (sort of) does (did) for baseball’s Angels, they’ve played in four cities (or five if you count their current home in Inglewood as separate).