USBL Basketball League (20 Teams, Logos, Jerseys, and Courts)

[Bomba Tomba]

A reference to the wildfires common in LA?

[jaha32]

On 12/7/2021 at 5:44 AM, MDTrey4 said:

This is a really good take on the flaming basketball concept. Excited to see the jerseys

Thanks. I think I should have the jerseys up this weekend. 

 

1 hour ago, Bomba Tomba said:

A reference to the wildfires common in LA?

Yeah. Not sure if people would really like cheering for a local natural disaster but the U of Miami has the Hurricanes so I think it works here. Could also be a reference to the sunny California weather but mainly I just like the name Fire.

[jaha32]

Here are the jerseys for the California Fire (along with the same logo again).

 

The logo has two shades of orange, so for the jerseys I decided to create a gradual sunset mirage vibe with horizontal orange lines. To mix things up a bit, the blue jersey has California written in script. It is almost identical to the lettering on California license plates, but I've sloped it upward.

 

 

 

[Bomba Tomba]

What a fitting name, because that is

[jaha32]

Next up is the Carolina Crocs. This team was originally green and purple (inspired by the '90s era Bucks) but the New Orleans Marauders already use purple and green so I switched it to black and green here, which is an underutilized color combo in my opinion.  This is the first team with a white jersey.

 

Ten teams down. Ten to go.

 

 

 

[Bomba Tomba]

Hope the Crocs don't play in crocs

[jaha32]

I like the name Crocs (I think it fits right in there with other shortened names like Bucs, Knicks, Cavs, Mavs, etc..) but was a little iffy on the name simply because of the shoe company. There was a pro basketball team in Australia called the Townsville Crocodiles which I've seen shorted to Crocs.

 

What do guys think? Does anyone have a preference between these options?

-Carolina Crocs

-Carolina Crocodiles (but it'd likely be shortened to Crocs on the jerseys anyway)

-Carolina Gators

[jbird669]

Does Carolina have an abundance of Crocodiles? Wouldn't that be more appropriate for Florida? 

[sky1324]

Crocodiles don't live in the Carolinas. They're barely even in the southern tip of Florida. I'd go back to the drawing board for Carolina - preferably starting with dropping the regional moniker for a city name.

[MilSox]

Quality logo. But not something for the Carolinas. 

[jaha32]

On 12/21/2021 at 2:30 AM, jbird669 said:

Does Carolina have an abundance of Crocodiles? Wouldn't that be more appropriate for Florida? 

 

Right, they don't have crocodiles but they do have some alligators on the coast so I could change the name to Gators and that'd work, wouldn't it?

_______

Based on the feedback so far, my options are to keep them in Carolina (Raleigh) and call them the Gators or move them to another city where the name Gators would be more fitting. I'm not planning to scrap the gator/crocodile logo because the whole inspiration for this team and half of these USBL teams is to re-create teams I made as a 10-13 year old, often tweaking the names or relocating cities, but still trying to salvage as much of the original as possible. This one is a remake of the fictional Carolina Caimans whose logo contained a double C (see below). Now I don't really like the name Caimans so when updating it, Crocs seemed to be a decent replacement, but maybe not.

 

Before I move ahead on changing this, which option below do you all think works best?

1) Carolina Gators (I'm biased towards this one since it maintains the original location)

2) Orlando Gators (awfully close to the Tampa team but I don't mind and the C could easily become an O)

3) Jacksonville Gators or some other city

4) New Orleans has alligators I think but already has a team

 

 

This is the original Carolina Caimans logo my older brother made for me on Microsoft Paint well over two decades ago. This league had 6 seasons of simulated games, rosters, schedules, logos, jerseys, championships and all that. A few years ago I stumbled upon these old files and over time just for fun I began slowly re-creating a few of the teams which has now evolved into this USBL project.

[sky1324]

Gators aren't associated with the Carolinas at all, much more Florida. If you're dead set on keeping a crocodile/gator-themed team, just move them.

[jaha32]

I think I’ll move them down to Jacksonville and call them the Gators. Home of the Gator Bowl.

[MilSox]

A "C" can be turned into an "O" quite easily. So maybe Orlando Crocs is something to consider?

[jaha32]

18 minutes ago, NicDB said:

A "C" can be turned into an "O" quite easily. So maybe Orlando Crocs is something to consider?

I also like the way the gator/croc fits within the “C” so if I go with Orlando it’ll easily convert to an elongated “O”. If I go with Jacksonville (or Miami), I’ll call that shape an oval and not an ”O”. I think it’ll work.

 

As far as Crocs, I’m not sure people liked that name. Technically Crocodiles don’t live in central-northern Florida (unless you go consider that alligators are crocodilian in science). Then again Tigers don’t live in Detroit and Penguins don’t live in Pittsburgh so I’m not sure what name to go with right now.

[scottyeagle]

This may be immaterial if you are moving the team to Jacksonville, but I don't think the inline of the C is adding much when it doesn't appear anywhere else in the branding. Filling it black, in my opinion, doesn't really throw off the color balance and creates a stronger C

[jaha32]

Here are the updates to the logo.

 

 

[jaha32]

 

On 12/24/2021 at 12:02 AM, scottyeagle said:

This may be immaterial if you are moving the team to Jacksonville, but I don't think the inline of the C is adding much when it doesn't appear anywhere else in the branding. Filling it black, in my opinion, doesn't really throw off the color balance and creates a stronger C

In the update above, I got rid of the inline within the "C" and it is converted into an oval now.

_____

Name Options: Gators or Crocodiles?

 

Jacksonville Gators

Orlando Gators (I'm not sure on Orlando since I want to space it out geographically from the Tampa Thunderhawks) 

Miami Gators

Miami Crocodiles

South Florida Crocodiles

(Using Crocodiles would allow me to convert the black oval into a "C" which I feel is more unique than an oval.)

 

[cLuTcHy]

Being from Florida people go crazy for the Gators man so even though I understand that this is entirely fictional

if there was ever an expansion franchise for team anywhere in Florida It would be highly unlikely that any Gators licensing would be used. I really like the whole usage of the Crocs/Crocodiles name and even though I know some people might not agree I really like the South Florida Crocodiles it just gives the state of Florida a brand we have never really seen besides the USF Bulls. And I think it would look so beautiful to see the words “South Florida” across a jersey. Also Florida is really into slangs for example “i’m going to a Noles game” “I’m going to a Bucs game” etc so I could definitely see someone saying “I’m going to a Crocs game”

[jaha32]

9 hours ago, cLuTcHy said:

Being from Florida people go crazy for the Gators man so even though I understand that this is entirely fictional

if there was ever an expansion franchise for team anywhere in Florida It would be highly unlikely that any Gators licensing would be used. I really like the whole usage of the Crocs/Crocodiles name and even though I know some people might not agree I really like the South Florida Crocodiles it just gives the state of Florida a brand we have never really seen besides the USF Bulls. And I think it would look so beautiful to see the words “South Florida” across a jersey. Also Florida is really into slangs for example “i’m going to a Noles game” “I’m going to a Bucs game” etc so I could definitely see someone saying “I’m going to a Crocs game”

 

I had similar thoughts about using the name Gators especially once it was pointed out that alligators and crocodiles are mainly associated with Florida only. Fictional or not, the name would always be overshadowed by the university. So after reading your thoughts as a Florida native, it has me leaning back towards Crocodiles/Crocs just because it's less used.  It's almost like the name Gators has few locations left where it'd be both original to that location and still make sense habitat-wise.

 

In the meantime, while I mull over the name -Miami or South Florida, I hope to have the next team up in a few days.