INTO THE 816-VERSE - Apollo Beach Royals (A) + Kansas City Royals (NLB) + Kansas City Thunder (NBA) + Kansas City Lakers (NBA) + Credits

[maxwasson]

Next stop we are headed to the Tampa Bay area, a city known not only for having a professional baseball team in the Rays, but also home to the spring training complexes/FCL clubs/ and Florida State League clubs of the Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, and Pirates.  What if the Royals had their spring training facilities, a Florida Complex League team, and a Florida State League team located in the Tampa Bay area?

 

BRANDING

This hypothetical Single-A team would be located in Apollo Beach, Florida on the east side of Tampa Bay, with the major league Rays on the other side of the bay. The Royals have previously had minor league affiliates in Fort Myers and Daytona Beach. 

 

EXTRA HOME SCRIPT LOGOS

 

Here are the extra home scripts I put together, (a good chunk of these are already official scripts that the Royals have worn in their history)

 

ROAD SCRIPT LOGOS

 

Here are the extra road script logos I made with the help of Struck Base.

 

EXTRA CAP LOGOS

And here the extra cap logos I put together

 

UNIFORMS (SET 1)

Here are the first set of uniforms I designed for the Apollo Beach Royals, each uniform has the Royals alternate logo as the right-facing sleeve patch, and the left-facing sleeve patch is the Florida State League logo. 

 

UNIFORMS (SET 2)

Here is the second set of uniforms which includes a set that resembles the Royals blue and gold alternates, and 2 black alternate uniforms. The decision to use the "Apollo Beach" road script on almost every uniform was inspired by the Burlington Royals official set when they were the rookie affiliate of the Royals in the Appalachian League.

 

TAMPA BAY TEAM MAP

Here you get a view of where the Royals facilites/FCL team/ and FSL affiliate would be, sharing a metro area with the Rays, Pirates, Yankees, Phillies, and Blue Jays.

 

The Apollo Beach Royals would also compete with the FSL affiliates of the Cardinals, Reds, Marlins, Twins, Mets, and Tigers. 

 

[maxwasson]

I would like to thank @coco1997 for telling me about the original Kansas City Royals, who were a Negro National League baseball club founded in 1917 by Ben Powell, they were sold to Piney Brown in 1925, and in 1928 the Negro League Royals changed their name to the Royal Giants and moved outside of Kansas City proper to play in Marshall, Missouri. 

 

BRANDING

The original Royals are given some new life with a king mascot, plus a violet, black, and white color scheme. The font used for the script logos and jersey numbers was Kingthings Petrock. 

 

EXTRA SCRIPT LOGOS

And here are the extra script logos I put together for the NLB Royals, there's not a ton because of a limited color scheme, but here they are.

 

UNIFORMS

I designed a standard 4-piece set for the Negro League Royals, a white home, a gray away, a violet home alternate, and a black away alternate. 

 

[maxwasson]

[maxwasson]

For this next concept, we're gonna flash ourselves back to 2006, back when the Seattle SuperSonics under owner Howard Schultz at the time were struggling both on-the court and financially as Howard Schultz was getting ready to sell the team, as efforts to a build new arena for the Seattle SuperSonics weren't making it past the drawing board. During this time, Schultz talked to ownership groups from Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Las Vegas, San Jose, Anaheim, and Kansas City. In our timeline, the SuperSonics were sold to Professional Basketball Club LLC; the OKC-based ownership group, but what if the bidding war for the Sonics was won by the Kansas City ownership group?

 

BRANDING

In this timeline, the Seattle SuperSonics pack their bags for Kansas City, Missouri as it's very possible that the name "Thunder" would be chosen given that Kansas City is adjacent to Tornado Alley and the Thunder would play their home games inside the brand new at-the-time Sprint Center in downtown KC. The font used for the scripts, insignias, and jersey numbers was Assiduous SmallCaps.

 

EXTRA HOME SCRIPTS

Here are the extra home script logos I designed for the Thunder.

 

ROAD SCRIPT LOGOS

And here are all the road script logos I designed for the KC Thunder.

 

EXTRA INSIGNIAS & PRIMARY LOGOS

I put together some orange and navy alternates for the primary logo, and to imitate the "OKC" insignia logo, I used the font Spacelord Two.

 

COURTS

 

Here is the Thunder's standard light blue home court design with navy outlines.

 

 

And here is the Thunder's City Edition court based on the current OKC Thunder City Edition court with the notable difference, being that Kansas City (a metro area based in two states) has both the state silhouettes of Kansas and Missouri on opposite sides of the court. 

 

UNIFORMS

As for the uniforms, I put together a 5-piece set with each uniform being based on a different jersey in the Thunder's history, the home uniform is based on the OKC Thunder home uniform from 2008-2019 (I didn't like it when they switched the "Thunder" and "Oklahoma City" scripts on the white and light blue jerseys), and the away uniform is based on the Thunder's current light blue uniform with the "Kansas City" script having an orange and black outline. Then you have an orange alternate based on the Thunder's "sunset" uniform from 2015-2017, a gray alternate based on the Thunder's city edition jersey from 2022-23, and the "City Edition" jersey based on the Thunder's current city edition jersey, with the pants emblem containing the states of Kansas and Missouri.

 

LOUD CITY POSTER

 

I took a stock image in downtown KC during some nighttime stormy weather, and put together a mock promo/billboard design with the Loud City nickname being reused for Kansas City. 

[maxwasson]

And to wrap up the Into the 816-Verse series once and for all, we get to cap it off with a scenario that has the Showtime Lakers moving to Kansas City in 1957 from Minneapolis. This might sound hard to believe given the Lakers' reputation as one of the NBA's model franchises but there was a time where the Minneapolis Lakers were struggling in the late 50s, because of this; Lakers owner Ben Berger was getting ready to sell the team to an ownership group based out of Kansas City, but offered to sell to local buyers first, the Lakers were sold to Bob Short in 1957, and then they moved to the sunny beaches of Los Angeles; 3 years later and the rest is history. But what if Ben Berger had sold the Lakers to the KC-based ownership group?

 

BRANDING

The logo for the KC Lakers in the modern day, probably wouldn't be too different from what they use now, the font used to recreate the "Los Angeles" part of the primary logo was Elanor Extra Bold Italic. The font used for the scripts and insignias was Lakers. 

 

EXTRA SCRIPT LOGOS

And here are the extra script logos I put together for the Lakers (A good majority of the scripts are already pretty much official)

 

EXTRA INSIGNIA & PRIMARY LOGOS

Here are the extra insignia logos and a couple of extra primary logos, I put together for the KC Lakers.

 

COURTS

 

The Lakers would've spent the late 50s and 60s inside the old Kansas City Municipal Auditorium, before moving into Kemper Arena (now known as HyVee Arena) througout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and pretty much up until the opening of the Sprint Center (now known as T-Mobile Center) from the 2007-08 NBA season and onwards. I tried to make the 3-point line purple, but the way that I have my basketball court template set up wouldn't let me unless I wanted to make the whole court outline purple. But I got pretty close to replicating the Lakers official home court.

 

 

Here is the city edition court I put together, that has a "KC" insignia logo at midcourt, with the KC skyline also present. 

 

UNIFORMS

As for the uniform set, I went in and replicated the iconic Lakers uniforms from 2001-2018 reminiscent of the Kobe/Shaq era, with a gold home, a purple away, a white alternate, and the black alternate being repurposed as the "City Edition" uniform. 

[maxwasson]

I am now finally putting a bow on the Into the 816-Verse series with both collages completed 

 

It's time for some credits!

 

DexterGraphicx: Blades (IHL), Blues (NFL), Chefs (NFL), Chiefs (Wolf Redesign) (NFL), Command/Brigade (AFL), Cowboys/Marshals (NFL), Dallas Texans (NFL), Grillers (ABA), Knights (ABA/NBA), Mustangs (WNBA/WBA), Omaha Outlanders (G-League), Outlaws (UHL), Reapers (NFL), Renegades (CPIFL), Royals 1.0 (NFL), Soul (ABA), Stars (NFL), Steers (ABL), Thunder (NBA), Tornadoes (TBL)

dollob: Cowboys (MLB), Dreamers (NBA)

PNB Graphics: Comets (MASL), Kansas City FC (MLS/NFL), Omaha Gnomes (MLS Next Pro), Spurs (NASL), Wizards (MLS)

Sajaj Paul: Giants (NLB), Packers (FL)

teeray01: Cowboys (MLB) - SFGiants58 style & Royals-style

Yusupedia: Blue Sox (A), Blues (AAA), Chiefs (Redesign) (NFL), Fort Worth Cattlemen (AAA), Kansas Tech (NCAA), Mules (MLB/NFL), Royals 2.0 (NFL), Royals (NLB),  Super Bowl LXII (NFL), T-Bones (AAPB)

Homemade (me):  Apollo Beach Royals (A), Lakers (NBA), Maroons (NLB), Royal Giants (NLB), Royals (NBA)

[maxwasson]

 

You heard that right, I'm not done!

 

There will be a sequel series titled "Across the 816-Verse" that is coming soon with 22 more concepts in this sequel series and a brand new collage

 

 

[coco1997]

Congrats on finishing this series! Looking forward to the sequel.