2022-23 NBA Logo & Jersey Changes

[JuicedSportsNow]

22 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

I think they were ambitiously trying to create a 'global brand' that had mass appeal beyond the state of Utah. And the tech space loves the extreme minimalism when it comes to design, so I can see why they thought a black & white J note was the way to go.

From everything I've gathered, this is accurate. It was an ambitious idea, but alienating your own fans in service of 'hypothetical' non-regional fans is a big swing with a brand this generic. Plus, as we all know, winning + marketable stars is what ultimately brings in new fans...

[Bruhammydude]

Jazz need purple, green, and yellow. Simple as.

[Lights Out]

59 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

From what we've heard so far, the team owner's initial instinct was to go all-in on black and white until the NBA reportedly stepped in and said "no," right?

 

I still don't get the league's growing fascination with plain black and white. I mean, I liked the Heat's Blackout and White Hot alternates back in the day. And the Clippers' Mister Cartoon alternates have grown on me too, although those have some subtle traces of color that enhance the look. But with Utah's disastrous rebrand, Memphis' leaked City uniforms for next season, some of the Warriors' alternates over the years, etc., it's getting to be too much.

 

Was the Nets' rebrand really that influential? I've always found their standard uniforms to be dull as hell - not ugly per se, but more just void of any personality or fun, the NBA equivalent of this:

 

 

The Nets weren't selling a lot of merchandise until recently, and even then, people are only buying it because they've had big names like KD, Kyrie and Harden, not because they love the White Label Beer aesthetic so much. So if teams like the Jazz are doing this because they think it will boost sales in any way that isn't short-term at best, they're nuts.

[Digby]

3 hours ago, Lights Out said:

The Nets weren't selling a lot of merchandise until recently, and even then, people are only buying it because they've had big names like KD, Kyrie and Harden, not because they love the White Label Beer aesthetic so much. So if teams like the Jazz are doing this because they think it will boost sales in any way that isn't short-term at best, they're nuts.

 

The Nets sold loads of merchandise when they first moved to Brooklyn. The Jay-Z cosigns and the Brooklynness of it all helped, obviously. But Deron Williams didn't hit the top-five jersey sales list because of his force of personality.

[CaliforniaGlowin]

3 hours ago, Digby said:

 

The Nets sold loads of merchandise when they first moved to Brooklyn. The Jay-Z cosigns and the Brooklynness of it all helped, obviously. But Deron Williams didn't hit the top-five jersey sales list because of his force of personality.

Wasn't that more about the local team than the design? 

[WestCoastBias]

8 hours ago, Lights Out said:

 

I still don't get the league's growing fascination with plain black and white. I mean, I liked the Heat's Blackout and White Hot alternates back in the day. And the Clippers' Mister Cartoon alternates have grown on me too, although those have some subtle traces of color that enhance the look. But with Utah's disastrous rebrand, Memphis' leaked City uniforms for next season, some of the Warriors' alternates over the years, etc., it's getting to be too much.

 

Was the Nets' rebrand really that influential? I've always found their standard uniforms to be dull as hell - not ugly per se, but more just void of any personality or fun, the NBA equivalent of this:

 

 

The Nets weren't selling a lot of merchandise until recently, and even then, people are only buying it because they've had big names like KD, Kyrie and Harden, not because they love the White Label Beer aesthetic so much. So if teams like the Jazz are doing this because they think it will boost sales in any way that isn't short-term at best, they're nuts.

 

I've always liked the Nets rebrand. The black/white and the simplicity just fits for them, probably because I viewed the rebrand as a stale boring franchise reinventing itself by moving to a cool new arena in an interesting location with a fresh identity that wanted to look timeless rather than flashy like what was the trend at the time.

 

Although I wouldn't mind a different word mark or striping. They definitely need to go back to the old court with the subway tile baselines, that court was sweet. I'd like to see a Dodger blue alternate too.

[The_Admiral]

The Nets' rebrand was terrible. There shouldn't be more than one black/white team in a league, the Nets B Brooklyn logo remains terrible, and the minimalist design of the uniforms was a poor fit for a team that had always been just a little bit creative with what they were doing (vertical letters, pseudo-tie-dye, netting). Of course, that matters less now that NBA teams just invent new uniforms every month based on something a graphic designer saw on the way from his condo to the arena. I hated every bit of it.

[Digby]

1 hour ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Wasn't that more about the local team than the design? 

Not exclusively. Early 2010s was the peak of black/white, “classy”-but-tough minimalism in the trendy hypebeast fashion of the moment. I can’t think of many rebrands that tried to make the connection to fashion that explicit. If they just touched up the old logo and put Brooklyn on the navy and silver unis, they would not have sold nearly as much, that I’m confident of. 
 

But yeah, trying to do it again, but worse, 10 years later, and for a perennial four-seed team in Utah is obviously not going to have the same impact, for all those reasons. It doesn’t even have the same impact in Brooklyn now that the fashion culture has moved on, which is why the Nets now alternate between throwbacks that retcon away New Jersey and dressing up as knockoff Basquiats.

[CATLogo1]

12 hours ago, JuicedSportsNow said:

From everything I've gathered, this is accurate. It was an ambitious idea, but alienating your own fans in service of 'hypothetical' non-regional fans is a big swing with a brand this generic. Plus, as we all know, winning + marketable stars is what ultimately brings in new fans...

Exactly. I'm a Utah Jazz fan, and I absolutely HATE these new uniform designs. I also HATE what the Jazz ended up with for its new team colors. I mean, seriously? What was wrong with what the team was wearing for its Association and Icon edition uniforms? The only changes I would have liked to see been made were reverting the striping pattern back to the 1984-1996 version, changing the primary color to purple, with yellow and green as secondary colors, and marrying the Jazz "J" note wordmark logo from 2016 in purple, yellow and green colors to the front of the jersey in the 1984-1996 design. This "rebrand" seriously makes me question my fanhood of the Utah Jazz. Needless to say, I won't be purchasing any merchandise with the new team colors.

[VandyDelphia Mike]

Congrats Utah, you knocked Orlando from the ranks of "blandest uniform switch."

 

[Foxxtrot44]

On 6/27/2022 at 12:37 PM, Bruhammydude said:

Jazz need purple, green, and yellow. Simple as.

 

Sorry, that color scheme apparently belongs to a city where *checks notes* no team actively wears it.

[Satomiblood]

I'm getting a bit of a Boxed Water vibe from those Jazz sets.

[JTernup]

13 hours ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Wasn't that more about the local team than the design? 

I worked at a sports apparel store in Colorado during college (2012-2016) and we had tons of people looking for Nets gear. It clearly had nothing to do with the team or market. They essentially created a successful lifestyle brand, which I think makes a ton of sense for a team in Brooklyn. 
 

Their subsequent infusion of color with the NJ Nets throwbacks and Biggie jerseys have been nice evolutions of that brand imo. I think what it comes down to is there are a lot of ways to develop a successful brand in the NBA but teams need to realize that Brooklyn doing it first with Jay Z does not mean you can pull it off in Utah with the Qualtrics guy.
 

I think it’s also a good thing that there are brands in the league that both CaliforniaGlowing and the admiral dislike, not everyone needs classic styling and color usage or neon volt. The Nets brand is perfect for the people they were trying to appeal to.

[Carolingian Steamroller]

12 hours ago, the admiral said:

The Nets' rebrand was terrible. There shouldn't be more than one black/white team in a league, the Nets B Brooklyn logo remains terrible, and the minimalist design of the uniforms was a poor fit for a team that had always been just a little bit creative with what they were doing (vertical letters, pseudo-tie-dye, netting). Of course, that matters less now that NBA teams just invent new uniforms every month based on something a graphic designer saw on the way from his condo to the arena. I hated every bit of it.

 

Vehemently disagree.

 

The Nets are the only black/white team in the NBA and I feel like they did it right by focusing on the details. The herringbone pattern on the side stripes are great because its a detail that you can only really see up close but was matched by the original floor. The extra stripes on the collar, arm holes, and shorts break up the stripes. The font is well sized and spaced. They also given us gems like the charcoal retro BKLYN jerseys and the Notorious BIG alternates (one of my favorite things to come out of NBA uniforms in recent years).

[Digby]

25 minutes ago, Carolingian Steamroller said:

Vehemently disagree.

 

The Nets are the only black/white team in the NBA and I feel like they did it right by focusing on the details. The herringbone pattern on the side stripes are great because its a detail that you can only really see up close but was matched by the original floor. The extra stripes on the collar, arm holes, and shorts break up the stripes. The font is well sized and spaced.

 

I'd agree with this. (Stopping the quote here because I think their forays into street-art wordmarks have been try-hard and ill-advised.) My only issues with their core brand are that the number font is narrow and ugly and doesn't go with the main wordmark, and they never did come up with a good primary logo to go with the jerseys and typography in the brand package.

[truepg]

13 hours ago, plobrien said:

 

I've always liked the Nets rebrand. The black/white and the simplicity just fits for them, probably because I viewed the rebrand as a stale boring franchise reinventing itself by moving to a cool new arena in an interesting location with a fresh identity that wanted to look timeless rather than flashy like what was the trend at the time.

But timeless and classy, and unprofessionally lackluster are different things, though.

 

3 hours ago, VandyDelphia Mike said:

Congrats Utah, you knocked Orlando from the ranks of "blandest uniform switch."

 

The Cavs still hold that title by a margin. What they switched from in favor of this makes it way more egregious than the Jazz.
 

[Digby]

Cleveland has enough in their history that a simple uniform can work with them. They also had the brilliant ideas like "normal basketball uniform trim patterns" and "correct colors". Doesn't really seem comparable.

[truepg]

9 minutes ago, Digby said:

Cleveland has enough in their history that a simple uniform can work with them. They also had the brilliant ideas like "normal basketball uniform trim patterns" and "correct colors". Doesn't really seem comparable.

What they switched from made this very lackluster uniform in a vacuum too so much more disastrous. The "colors" is arguable, they looked better to me priorly with metallic gold and do so much better now and stand out from the other teams to their advantage with it back.

[McCall]

1 hour ago, truepg said:

What they switched from made this very lackluster uniform in a vacuum too so much more disastrous. The "colors" is arguable, they looked better to me priorly with metallic gold and do so much better now and stand out from the other teams to their advantage with it back.

Doesn't matter. THAT is a nice looking basketball uniform. What the Jazz look like now, regardless of what they looked like before, is the blandest by far. Brooklyn and Cleveland actually look like professional basketball uniforms, however simple they may be. The Jazz, with the stripped down... everything, yellow as clearly an afterthought choice, and gigantic lettering and numbers, looks completely youth rec league, like Kindergarteners wearing 4th grade jerseys.

[Pyromania1983]

Sixers are rumored to bring back their Iverson-era black jerseys in the near future!

 

"They won’t be worn next season to coincide with the 25th anniversary as the Sixers are not one of the teams authorized by the league to wear a throwback — or “classic” — uniform in 2022-23. But it’s safe to assume that the black uniforms are in the conversation to be worn as alternates the next time the Sixers are allowed to do so."

 

https://www.inquirer.com/sixers/sixers-jerseys-allen-iverson-pat-croce-nba-classic-20220628.html?utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=Philly.com+Twitter+Account&cid=Philly.com+Twitter&utm_medium=social