OKC Thunder and Miami Marlins

[BBTV]

I'm also rooting against OKC in this finals, because I think it'd be a disgrace to the history of the game to have photos of players in those horrible road uniforms (or even the home uniforms that just say THUNDER) holding the O'Brien trophy immortalized forever.

I hate OKC too, but they're a good team regardless so I don't think they'd be a disgrace to the game. If anything they would be a feel good story for Oklahoma City. Their fans earned themselves an NBA team (albeit in a crappy way) and it'd be great to see a new team win the Finals. Aesthetics mean jack when it comes to actual play on the court.

Well I don't care much for the play on the court, as I'm more of a fan of the aesthetics than the athletics. Maybe it's just because I'm a little older than a lot of the people on the board (34), but I don't like seeing Oklahoma City mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, etc. Granted there are other non-traditional big-league cities (San Antonio and Portland for example) that are immortalized in NBA lore, but at least they look like professional teams.

I get that the NBA and NHL exist in smaller markets than MLB and NFL, and in some cases, that creates some charming stories. I just don't see that here.

Either way, on the Sports Logos part of this board, my opinions will be 90% based on aesthetics.

And the Master of Cynacism strikes again.

I'm not sure you know what cynicism means.

[sportsfan0518]

I'm also rooting against OKC in this finals, because I think it'd be a disgrace to the history of the game to have photos of players in those horrible road uniforms (or even the home uniforms that just say THUNDER) holding the O'Brien trophy immortalized forever.

I hate OKC too, but they're a good team regardless so I don't think they'd be a disgrace to the game. If anything they would be a feel good story for Oklahoma City. Their fans earned themselves an NBA team (albeit in a crappy way) and it'd be great to see a new team win the Finals. Aesthetics mean jack when it comes to actual play on the court.

Well I don't care much for the play on the court, as I'm more of a fan of the aesthetics than the athletics. Maybe it's just because I'm a little older than a lot of the people on the board (34), but I don't like seeing Oklahoma City mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, etc. Granted there are other non-traditional big-league cities (San Antonio and Portland for example) that are immortalized in NBA lore, but at least they look like professional teams.

I get that the NBA and NHL exist in smaller markets than MLB and NFL, and in some cases, that creates some charming stories. I just don't see that here.

Either way, on the Sports Logos part of this board, my opinions will be 90% based on aesthetics.

And the Master of Cynacism strikes again.

I'm not sure you know what cynicism means.

(n) A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act.

[McCall]

I'm also rooting against OKC in this finals, because I think it'd be a disgrace to the history of the game to have photos of players in those horrible road uniforms (or even the home uniforms that just say THUNDER) holding the O'Brien trophy immortalized forever.

I hate OKC too, but they're a good team regardless so I don't think they'd be a disgrace to the game. If anything they would be a feel good story for Oklahoma City. Their fans earned themselves an NBA team (albeit in a crappy way) and it'd be great to see a new team win the Finals. Aesthetics mean jack when it comes to actual play on the court.

Well I don't care much for the play on the court, as I'm more of a fan of the aesthetics than the athletics. Maybe it's just because I'm a little older than a lot of the people on the board (34), but I don't like seeing Oklahoma City mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, etc. Granted there are other non-traditional big-league cities (San Antonio and Portland for example) that are immortalized in NBA lore, but at least they look like professional teams.

I get that the NBA and NHL exist in smaller markets than MLB and NFL, and in some cases, that creates some charming stories. I just don't see that here.

Either way, on the Sports Logos part of this board, my opinions will be 90% based on aesthetics.

And the Master of Cynacism strikes again.

I'm not sure you know what cynicism means.

(n) A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act.

May have spelled it wrong, but other than that...

[BBTV]

I'm also rooting against OKC in this finals, because I think it'd be a disgrace to the history of the game to have photos of players in those horrible road uniforms (or even the home uniforms that just say THUNDER) holding the O'Brien trophy immortalized forever.

I hate OKC too, but they're a good team regardless so I don't think they'd be a disgrace to the game. If anything they would be a feel good story for Oklahoma City. Their fans earned themselves an NBA team (albeit in a crappy way) and it'd be great to see a new team win the Finals. Aesthetics mean jack when it comes to actual play on the court.

Well I don't care much for the play on the court, as I'm more of a fan of the aesthetics than the athletics. Maybe it's just because I'm a little older than a lot of the people on the board (34), but I don't like seeing Oklahoma City mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, etc. Granted there are other non-traditional big-league cities (San Antonio and Portland for example) that are immortalized in NBA lore, but at least they look like professional teams.

I get that the NBA and NHL exist in smaller markets than MLB and NFL, and in some cases, that creates some charming stories. I just don't see that here.

Either way, on the Sports Logos part of this board, my opinions will be 90% based on aesthetics.

And the Master of Cynacism strikes again.

I'm not sure you know what cynicism means.

(n) A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act.

May have spelled it wrong, but other than that...

Well it's typically used to indicate distrust or skepticism. I'd prefer curmudgeon. Either way, I don't see how anything I wrote is not valid on a sports logos board. I don't think that OKC's uniforms look NBA worthy, nor fit within in the context of the classic championship-caliber clubs.

[PoppersPop]

Just this morning I've noticed a ton of blue Thunder shirts around campus and it crossed my mind as to why I don't have any Thunder gear. It's exclusively the horrible logo. I haven't bought any in the last 3 or 4 years because I was (and still am) holding out hope that a rebrand is coming. I never thought a trip to the Finals would possibly derail that hope.

[Gothamite]

If the Marlins can ditch their uniforms after two world championships, there's hope that the Thunder aren't stuck with their awful look.

[goforbroke]

Is this the first time in 4 major sports that two non-plural teams are meeting in the finals?

[PoppersPop]

If the Marlins can ditch their uniforms after two world championships, there's hope that the Thunder aren't stuck with their awful look.

I agree, but you gotta figure it will push it back an extra year or two. How often do recent champions/contenders rebrand?

[TheOldRoman]

Obviously the logos are terrible, but the only part of the Thunder uniforms which suck, IMO, is the wordmark on the road jersey. "City" looks terrible on its own line. It gets lost under "Oklahoma" and is as wide as the numbers underneath. If they can't fit "Oklahoma City" on one line, they need to just go with "Thunder". And really, they should have done that regardless. While baseball teams should have the city name on road uniforms, I don't care for when NBA teams do it. In baseball, the city helps distinguish the white from gray uniforms. The Cardinals road uniforms are a paint-bucket tool away from their home unis (hats excluded). However, white jerseys from colored jerseys is a larger difference than white from gray. I think NBA teams should use the team name on both jerseys in most cases. They should be presenting the same look, just with inverted colors.

If everything about the Thunder's uniforms were kept the same except "Thunder" going on the road jerseys, I think the set would be damn good. At least it is a traditional basketball template, unlike the garbage piping-turned-neck-cuff template Nike gave the Heat, Lakers, Pistons, et. al. They have cuffs around the arms and neck, they don't have wide shoulders like some recent jerseys, they don't use an airport code on their jerseys like Phoenix, they don't have a logo under the neck or on the back, and they don't have an idiotic collar like the Clippers. The Thunder's jerseys are uninspiring, but they are still solid.

[BBTV]

It's a horrible name, but they could have built their identity around bison (the "thundering heard" if you will) or a mythology motif (Thor, etc.)

There were several concepts on here and other boards that used both of these ideas, and while none were perfect, they were better than what was used.

[Island_Style]

I think Miami will drop the yellow soon enough. Kind of pointless.

I agree. But I guess having yellow in the scheme makes them a little more original.

The yellow is there as a representation of the sun in the M. The orange is the morning (or evening, if you're in the water facing west towards the shore) sky and blue, the water. All this to go with the "leaping" marlin on the logo. The only way yellow will be dropped is if they change the logo almost completely.

Please. No one looks at the logo and sees that without explanation. Take out the yellow and slap on some blue. Call it sky if it makes you feel better.

Have to redo the whole logo.....ha ha ha.

And you have no sense of the composition of the logo. What you think or what you think everybody else thinks does not make it any less of the meaning that it is. There is reasoning for each of the colors and their placement. You may not think it looks good, but the reasoning is not debatable. So your actually advocating for random coloring rather than composed coloring.

You are replacing a color panel. Again, I laugh at you that you cant drop yellow.

[oldschoolvikings]

I laugh at you that you cant drop yellow.

Taken completely out of context, I want this to be my new catchphrase. I'll just randomly toss it into conversations.

[whitedawg22]

I also wouldn't want to give the OKC owners any reason to keep the identity for even a minute longer than they otherwise would. I almost want them to be punished for picking that name and then going with a logo and uniform design like that.

You might be the only sports fan who thinks the OKC owners are despicable primarily for picking a bad logo.

[McCall]

I think Miami will drop the yellow soon enough. Kind of pointless.

I agree. But I guess having yellow in the scheme makes them a little more original.

The yellow is there as a representation of the sun in the M. The orange is the morning (or evening, if you're in the water facing west towards the shore) sky and blue, the water. All this to go with the "leaping" marlin on the logo. The only way yellow will be dropped is if they change the logo almost completely.

Please. No one looks at the logo and sees that without explanation. Take out the yellow and slap on some blue. Call it sky if it makes you feel better.

Have to redo the whole logo.....ha ha ha.

And you have no sense of the composition of the logo. What you think or what you think everybody else thinks does not make it any less of the meaning that it is. There is reasoning for each of the colors and their placement. You may not think it looks good, but the reasoning is not debatable. So your actually advocating for random coloring rather than composed coloring.

You are replacing a color panel. Again, I laugh at you that you cant drop yellow.

No, you don't understand what you're talking about. YOU may see it only as a color panel, but within the composition of the logo, it has a representation, being that of the sun. Just as the other two color panels, orange an blue, have their representations as well, of the sky and water. Again, I laugh at you for your condescending ignorance towards the subject at hand and logos in general.

[hailstateunis]

I like the Thunder's uniforms. Not outdated but not super-modern. I agree the logo sucks, though.

[The_Admiral]

The Marlins should add red and green and make all the "color" colors secondary to black and silver. The Thunder are an utterly lost cause and all you can do is imagine that they're the Supersonics instead.

[BBTV]

I also wouldn't want to give the OKC owners any reason to keep the identity for even a minute longer than they otherwise would. I almost want them to be punished for picking that name and then going with a logo and uniform design like that.

You might be the only sports fan who thinks the OKC owners are despicable primarily for picking a bad logo.

I'm not that much of a sports fan - and we're on a logos / design forum, not a sports forum.

[cshookemHORNS]

I actually like the Thunders brand. (ducks for cover)

[shaydre1019]

Anybody else disappointed that they chose the name thunder but did not have thunderstruck playing when announcing the starting lineup?

[IceCap]

I'm of the opinion that the Thunder uniforms and colours are great, but that the logo is just kind of bad. It's not even that terrible. Conceptually it's not all that different from the Lakers, Clippers, Pistons, or Nets logos. A basketball, the team name, and the name or initials of the location. Sure, a thundering bison would have been a neat twist on the name, and Norse mythology around Thor has a lot of cool imagery (lightning bolts, hammers, etc...) but as far as NBA primary logos go, the Thunder's logo isn't that out there or bad conceptually speaking. It could have been better executed, but really. The problem isn't that it has nothing to do with the team name.

Now back to the uniforms and colours. Like I said, I think they're great. I was originally put off by the decision to have both "OKLAHOMA" and "CITY" above the number, but I think it works with the font they've chosen. Everything about the uniforms seems simple, traditional, yet unique.

The colours really help with that. I think they're stunning. I really liked the Warriors' old navy, golden gate orange, and gold scheme, but it was just to "out there" for a team with the history that the Warriors had. They're perfect, however, for a team that set up shop in 2008. The addition (and emphasis) on a lighter blue really helps the whole thing pop, I think.

I don't buy the "Oklahoma City doesn't deserve a NBA Championship team because they're not New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Boston" logic though. Is Oklahoma City a huge cosmopolitan metropolis? No, but if that were the criteria for NBA Championships then the Knicks would win the thing every year. As someone who cheered for the Jazz in two straight NBA Finals (for unrelated reasons though) I like the idea of a smaller market getting a chance to make a splash every now and then.

As for the Marlins, I'm with McCall. Keep the gold/yellow. Not only does it allude to a sunset, but it also makes the logo pop just a little bit more.