Asked whether he would ever switch the Washington Wizards back to the Bullets, team owner Ted Leonsis was noncommital. The late Abe Pollin, the previous team owner, decided to drop the name Bullets in 1995 as a message against gun violence, saying it was in honor of his friend Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated with a pistol.

“My father was righteous, maybe even self-righteous,” my friend Bob Pollin, Abe’s son who is an economics professor, told me. “He had a moral motive for doing this. Now some find the name Wizards wimpy. They think Bullets is cooler, as in Navy SEALs shoot bullets. But I take great pride in my father having done it.”

Snyder should change the Redskins name, he said, as “an act of courage and a civic contribution.”

All you have to do is watch a Western. The term “redskin” is never a compliment.