I guess Lakers as in LA-kers does make some sense, it makes a heckuva lot more sense than Utah Jazz, yeah when I think of Satchmo and all those jazz greats, Utah is the first thing that comes to mind. /s
Well, the Jazz were originally the New Orleans Jazz. When they moved from New Orleans, they kept the nickname which makes no sense for another city.
The Jazz, in case you did not know, were originally the New Orleans Jazz. The cultural dissonance between New Orleans and SLC is, well, striking. When I stopped over in SLC on my way to Alaska once, I read story in the local paper about a National Guard unit composed of Utah and Neveda soldiers, known as the Saints and the Sinners. The truly odd thing is that front page had a wire-service story about a soldier from my tiny hometown of Boxborough, Massachusetts, who was running a military salvage yard in Iraq for the Army, and presumably other services.
Another sports franchise name anomaly is the Calgary Flames, who were at one time from Atlanta.