Discogod

Elmore Smith vs. Wilt, with an interesting NOB on Smith's Braves uni:

And isn't that Danny Ainge in the black jersey? Odd to see him in a non-Blue Jays baseball uni.

1 hour ago, verno said:

My opinion, all three of these players are in the right uniform. 

Barkley wore that uniform for all of half a dozen preseason games and you think it's the "right" uniform? Seriously?

10 hours ago, MCM0313 said:

The cursive script doesn't really look "wrong" on Jordan to me. No, it isn't the jersey design in which he won six NBA Finals, but he first became an NBA star in this style. He was wearing cursive script when he dropped a playoff-record 63 points on the Celtics (in a loss, and in a series in which the Bulls were swept, but a record nonetheless). He's wearing cursive script on his sought-after rookie card. MJ has no wrong uniform in Chicago...well, except #12.

No he wasn't. The Bulls dropped that design after Jordan's rookie season; by his second year they were wearing essentially the same unis they have now.

10 hours ago, 2001mark said:

On what planet are the Raptors the right team for Oak? He'll always be a Knick as far as I'm concerned.

Sticking with the Bulls, here's a couple of team photos.

1981-82:

And 1974-75, showing a couple of styles of lettering - vertically arched and radially arched:

17 hours ago, kimball said:

Is there a reasoning of the mid-season change? Are there any other examples of such a change?

 

I want to say there was back some 10-15 years ago? Was it the Wizards? I'll have to dig.

From what I recall, it was a mistake on Champion's part - the wordmark was smaller than it should have been, and there were legibility issues with the wordmark & numbers on the home uni. I'd always thought it was fixed after a couple of games and was quite surprised to discover they lasted until mid-season. I think there were various issues when Champion took over, ranging from material issues to tailoring & size problems. It was a good few years before they got all the kinks out. Indeed, some teams continued to use Sand-Knit unis for the 1990-91 season (and even into the following season). I've seen several Bucks game jerseys from the '91 season that were carried over from the previous season, some with the Sand Knit tags removed and Champion tags sewn on.

The Jazz & Bullets were a couple of other teams that suffered from incorrect number colours in the 90s, but AFAIK only in preseason games - I'm fairly sure their errors were sorted by the time of the regular season began.

I know it was mentioned earlier in the thread, but here's some pics of the 1991-92 Blazers' home unis with the black letters & numbers, before they switched to red midseason. I don't have the exact date they made the switch, but they were wearing the black numbers as late as 31 January 1992.

(Great shot of the Mavericks' one-year road unis there, too!)

Some other random stuff...

The Clippers' seldom-seen "Los Angeles" script unis from 1987-88:

In 1981-82, the Pacers introduced a new home uni (the road uni carried over from the previous year). This would only last a year before it was replaced.

For the 1983-84 season, this was replaced with a gold version:

When the Pacers overhauled their look in 1985, they introduced another uni set that would only last a year before being tweaked:

11 hours ago, SabresRule7361 said:

This was a one season matchup

 

2 seasons, actually - those Pacers unis were worn in 1983-84 and 1984-85.Still, those particular unis only faced off twice so I'd still consider it a rare matchup.

49 minutes ago, cubsfan2015 said:

Those Hawks unis was used until 96/97,I believe.

Nope, last used in the 1994-95 season.That's from a preseason game at the AirCanada Center on 19 October 1995.

The Clippers did a similar thing during the last couple of San Diego years, introducing a new home uni a year before introducing the corresponding road uni (or unis in this case, as they used 2 different coloured road unis that year). The Bucks were another team to stagger the introduction of new home & road unis in the mid 70s, before introducing the first version of the Irish Rainbow unis. The Knicks also introduced their classic home unis a year before wearing the roads..I believe the 76ers did the same thing a few times too, although the Sixers' uni history is a convoluted clusterf*** that I haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet.

12 hours ago, kimball said:

I never realized this ... about the Sonics.

 

Back in the late '70s the Washington Bullets and Seattle Sonics met in back-to-back Finals. The Bullets won in 1978 and the Sonics in 1979. What I never noticed was the Sonics' uniforms between the two Finals. 

 

I knew the Sonics' jerseys in 1978 were the Bill Russell Celtic-inspired jerseys, but those were apparently just for the road! They wore the familiar arched "Sonics" jerseys at home. 

 

Here is a shot from Game 6 in 1978.

 

 

And, here is a picture of Game 7 in 1978.

 

 

The following year the Sonics added a matching road jersey. As evidenced by the this picture from the 1979 Finals ...

 

 

This really kind of blew my mind, because I just always assumed that the Sonics wore the same template jersey for both home and road. I know the Sonics wore similar home jerseys to the 1978 road jerseys as seen here (at least the year before -- with NY Nets jersey) ...

 

 

Does anyone have any information on that timeline? I'm going to dig a bit deeper, but I thought I'd put this out there to see if there is anything someone else knows more readily. 

I don't have the exact dates in front of me, but the Sonics introduced the Celtics-esque design when Bill Russell took over as coach in 1975. In 1977 they changed the home unis to the arch design whilst keeping the previous road unis, then introduced a matching road uni in 1978.

6 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

When the Jazz moved to Utah, why didn't they just use the Stars name again? 

Money. The Jazz were on the verge of going under by the time they moved to Utah and there just wasn't the funds to rebrand. Plus, the move wasn't approved until fairly late in the offseason (late June, I believe), leaving very little turnaround time to come up with new logos, uniforms etc.

They might have only made it through 3 games, but they made it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated!

They're very dark blue.

1 hour ago, Frylock said:

Adding to the pre-1996 NBA throwbacks...

 

November 17, 1994 - Cleveland at Portland, celebrating each team's 25th season (Portland actually had a 25th Anniversary logo that year)

 

 

Amazing! They even included the NBA 25th anniversary patch on the shorts!

Had no idea that this happened, and I've been researching NBA unis for 25+ years now - which I guess goes to show how poorly documented these things are. The only other game I know of was during the 1993-94 season, when the Celtics visited the Lakers. Both teams were supposed to wear throwbacks (I'm guessing 60s unis), but for whatever reason it never happened.

1 hour ago, Sodboy13 said:

This thread is wonderful, and it's unbelievable that we don't have an NBA uniform database like we do for the NHL, NFL, and MLB.

Oh, it's been tried. I've been a part of several such databases over the years, but none have ever got off the ground. Heck, my first website back in 1996 was a small page full of various jerseys I'd clumsily drawn in Microsoft Paint. It's one of my dreams to be able to view a site such as NHLuniforms.com or Dressed To The Nines dedicated to the NBA (and ABA, and might as well chuck the CBA in there too, they had some interesting unis).

Here's the article I'm assuming Octodude was talking about, from the May 16 1994 Toronto Star:

And to get somewhat back on topic, here's another story about the original Raptors unis, which had a few tweaks before they hit the court (most notably, removing red accents from the letters and removing the "Toronto" from the logo:

Both of these articles came from the pinned thread about logo & uni news stories at the top of this forum, a fantastic thread to pore through if you've a spare hour or six.

I'm pretty sure the Knicks changed their home unis to the classic version the year before they changed the road unis. That kind of thing was fairly common back then, right up to the early 80s.

I actually thought it was common knowledge that the Bullets wore orange at home. For a long time (pre-internet) I thought they only had 1 uniform set that they used both at home and on the road, because they were wearing the orange unis in every picture I saw.

Pre-1996 NBA throwback games:

27 November 1992, Timberwolves at Bullets:

13 January 1993, Warriors at 76ers - both teams wore 1966-67 unis (couldn't find a pic, but there's a clip in the 1993 NBA Jam Session video, where I first saw it)

2 December 1993, Supersonics at Bullets:

2 January 1994, 76ers at Nuggets:

22 April 1994, Bullets at Cavaliers - both teams wore 1975-76 throwbacks (again, no pic. I got this info from former Cavs GM Wayne Embry's autobiography)

 31 March 1995, Nuggets at Pacers:

42 minutes ago, Old School Fool said:

Also in that Sonics pic, the Champion logo is on the shorts. There was talk in this thread about how it never appeared on uniforms, but there it is!

Those aren't shorts, they're the warm-up pants.

2 hours ago, BShaw20 said:

When did the Sonics wear this retro?

22 December, 1993. They played the Bullets, with both teams wearing throwbacks.

The NBA claims that the first teams to wear throwbacks were for the 50th anniversary season in 1996-97, but there were numerous games going back to 1992 where teams wore them. I've got loads more pictures from these games (I think there was actually a thread about them here a while back), I'll get them posted later.

As promised, here's a few interesting pics:

1962-63 Syracuse Nationals team photo with a mismatched uni - there was no #3 on the Nats' roster that year, no idea who it is.

More mismatched unis with the '50 & '57 Rochester Royals:

The Bucks' Mickey Johnson with a double-decker Full Name On Back (the Bucks also had Marques Johnson, so simply using an initial wouldn't have sufficed):

A couple of pics of the '75 Warriors rare full name unis (and as a bonus, another shot of the first-year Jazz):

Some rare pics of the first year Buffalo Braves' home unis (with tail inconsistencies!):

Clyde Frazier during what I'm assuming is a Legends Game (interesting sidenote - the Legends game at All-Star Weekend featured the first cases of jersey ads in the modern era, being sponsored by Schick):

Odd numbers on the '97 Bullets (this was changed before the regular season started):

15 minutes ago, kimball said:

 

Speaking of the Nets. Are there any other teams in the NBA that ditched one design for another before coming back to the SAME design? And, I am not talking about the Jazz note logo because that jersey was modernized.

The Knicks went from the classic championship units to the navy-and-maroon set, then back a few years later.

I wish I could like this thread a million times.

I've got a ton of stuff in my archives, but I'm just about to go away for the weekend. I may post some stuff on Sunday night if I get a chance.