After dozens of leaks (every single one of which turned out to be accurate) and a few legit unveilings, the NBA finally went ahead and revealed all 30 of this season’s City Edition designs. These uniforms will be worn by the home team in the In-Season Tournament games, which start tomorrow, and also in other games throughout the season.
Here’s how I’ve formatted the images in this post:
- For each team, I’ve provided the NBA’s “storytelling” cheat sheet. (Thank god they told us that “Indy” is “Indianapolis’ nickname,” right?)
- For most teams, I’ve also provided a photo of a player wearing the uniform. I’ll add more of these as I find them.
- Since home teams will be wearing these uniforms in the In-Season Tournament, I’ve also provided each team’s tourney court, so you can envision how the uniform will look on the court.
- Finally, I’ve linked to the silly marketingspeak page for each team’s City design.
Ready? Here we go:
Atlanta Hawks
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Boston Celtics
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Brooklyn Nets
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Charlotte Hornets
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Chicago Bulls
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Cleveland Cavaliers
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Dallas Mavericks
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Denver Nuggets
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Detroit Pistons
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Golden State Warriors
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Houston Rockets 
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Indiana Pacers
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LA Clippers
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Los Angeles Lakers
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Memphis Grizzlies
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Miami Heat
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Milwaukee Bucks
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Minnesota Timberwolves
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New Orleans Pelicans
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New York Knicks
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Oklahoma City Thunder
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Orlando Magic
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Philadelphia 76ers
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Phoenix Suns
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Portland Trail Blazers
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Sacramento Kings
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San Antonio Spurs
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Toronto Raptors
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Utah Jazz
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Washington Wizards
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A few hits, lots of swings and misses. Most of these fail the biggest test of design relevance, by which I mean that there is simply no compelling reason for them to exist. But that’s where the NBA uni-verse is at these days, so whaddaya gonna do.
Woof.
Woof is right, seems they are in a contest to be as dull as possible, evidently the bar isn’t low enough for these.
And I’m still surprised how much Houston looks like the Clippers.
I’m wondering what the quota was for BFBS jerseys in Beaverton, OR. So many of these say “light up” or “the glow of the city” or whatever and have so little color.
Nola one is hilarious. Just screams “Come to New Orleans and you will die”. Even the Mascot could not escape.
These are mostly terrible, but how great is that astronaut dunking a basketball on Houston’s shorts?
Incredible!
Was going to say exactly this! Hoping they keep that logo!
Why is color spelled the British/Canadian way on Washington’s promo pic??
Very odd. I have a friend who works at NBA Canada – I’ll ask him next time I see him if I can remember.
I was always told that the Sixers couldn’t be the 76ers on their jerseys because the only number on a uniform front was the player number. But 5280 is OK?
I feel like this reached critical mass long ago and any good idea is already used.
76 is an eligible number
5280 isn’t
this is the first time ive seen those courts and they are all terrible and bad
They aren’t great, but tbh they don’t look as bad as I originally thought…kinda like a few of em now
I’m having the precise opposite reaction. I can’t even find the one or two I thought were ok before. Maybe the Kings? The rest are dogwater.
It makes more sense now why so many of the jerseys are gray or black. They opted for brightly colored courts with darker contrasting jerseys. With a few exceptions (e.g., Jazz), most teams seem to have different colors than the courts.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it does explain so many muted City jerseys. The focus seems to be on the shiny new courts.
Aside from the ridiculous marketing speak on these graphics, there are some equally, if not more, ridiculous errors. Some fun examples:
DAL: My favorite, “The shorts features embossed guitar strings that tie us all together” – the ‘ol noun/verb agreement issue coupled with especially awful marketing speak.
MIA: “The matra…” guessing they meant mantra!
PHX: “El Suns” haha, even with the language mix it should be Los Suns, which even has previously appeared on their uniforms.
MEM: “Showcases the teams secondary logo…” leaving out possessive apostrophes (in others too, just one example)
Not trying to pick on whoever did this, but you’d think it’d have gotten an editing pass.
Did Miami misspell “mantra” on their pic?
Totally! And the Philly hype: “Reinterpreted as the iconic neon signage that has embraced the markets outer facade since the 1940’s.” makes no grammatical sense. You’d think professional graphic designers would at least be able to pass remedial English.
Sweet fancy Moses, what a load of garbage.
I’d say Charlotte and Utah have the only designs that are the least bit worthwhile.
In a vacuum, I like about six or seven of these uniforms. The rest of them are junk.
Milwaukee feels like they ripped off the Atlanta Hawks’ Dominique Wilkins-era uniforms without asking permission. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t look like it should be a Milwaukee Bucks uniform. And does anyone in Milwaukee really care so much about Corporation I’ve Never Heard of Before Forum that they are excited to have design details related to it incorporated into the team’s uniforms? I always thought Bucks fans’ hearts still belonged to the MECCA.
I actually like Utah’s and maybe Minnesota’s latest City Edition uniforms better than their standard uniforms (if such a thing even exists anymore in the NBA). For Utah, that’s not hard given their way-too-minimalist current uniform set. And Minnesota’s regular look is innocuous enough that even something as simple as adding some frost to the top of the jerseys adds some much-needed character to their identity.
The Jazz current black and yellow uniforms are just terrible. I do like the two purple alternates, including this city jersey that they have. But I’m hoping they ditch those black and yellow jerseys next season and go back to something more traditional.
So the Rockets’ uniforms, based on the color scheme and what they say about them on their promotional imagery, are meant to “honor” the University of Houston’s “Phi Slama Jama” teams of the ’80s? Maybe UH should send the Rockets a cease-and-desist letter for infringing upon their trademark! It sure seems like “blatant copying” to me…
There are many times when I’m glad my favorite NBA team is not the Nets, and this is one of those times. The Brooklyn unis have got to be the most ridiculous/ugly in the Association’s history. I hope the person who designed them is kind to their seeing-eye dog.
So you can imagine how I feel since I am a Nets fan.I usually buy city edition merchandise. Not this year. I simply do not understand who would think that garbage is ok. This makes the in season tournament which I thought was a stupid stupid even more dumb. If you are going to make new unis every year why can’t they look good? I don’t know how to take my team seriously when they are dressed up like a 1st grader who went crazy with some crayons.
And YOU’RE getting a black uniform and YOU’RE getting a black uniform and YOU’RE
“What fresh hell is this?”
Crazy that there were at least two typos on all of these graphics. They were making me too dizzy to look at more
I rescued baseball (well, I tried to) about a year ago, looks like I got a bunch of NBA uniforms to tackle next. No rest for the wicked!
Paul, I love your work, but I’m a little disappointed by this write up. I was hoping for more reviews and analysis. Which ones do you consider to be the hits? Which ones really stink? Why?
I know the City Edition uniforms have no need to exist, but neither do any uniforms beyond the standard home and away kits. What makes the City Edition uniforms any less necessary than the Statement ones? Or any of the other third jerseys, alternates and throwbacks that you’ve covered in the past?
Why draw the line here and not back in the 50s when the Bruins started wearing a black sweater? Or in the 70s when the A’s introduced their green and gold tops? Or in 1994 when the NFL had a league-wide throwback uniform program (on which you recently had a retrospective)?
I understand your refusal to not cover purely retail merchandise. But the City Editions will be worn in-game, for some teams almost a quarter of the season. So I think these uniforms require a little more of your attention, and I think your readership would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks, Paul, keep up your excellent work!
Hi, Matthew! The best ones, to me, are the Kings, Rockets, and Celtics.
I understand your disappointment, and your critiques of my approach are fair. But I have a hard time taking the City program seriously. I said years ago that the annual design carousel was unsustainable and that they’d soon be scraping the bottom of the creative barrel, and that’s clearly what has happened. I don’t mean that in an “I told you so” way; I just mean that the sorry state of the program seems both predictable and self-evident, so I don’t see the need to say much more.
When I said most of these “have no compelling reason to exist,” I didn’t mean in a functional sense; I meant that they feel completely uninspired, and that they only reason they’re here is “We have this program that says we have to crank out another design every year, so here’s this year’s version. Oh, and even if you like it, it’ll be gone after one year.” That’s very different from the examples you cited.
Although the designs will be worn in-game, it’s really a lifestyle retail program masquerading as an in-game program. Trying to analyze it in any serious way makes my head hurt — like, I can almost feel my brain cells dying off. At some point, refusing to engage with it directly qualifies as self-care on my part (and also, in my opinion, gives it about as much respect as it deserves).
YMMV, etc. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and hope you appreciate you my response in turn.
NBA/NFL/MLB is getting as bad as US Motor Sports (NASCAR/IndyCar), if you look at jersey options vs. car liveries. I need a spotters guide for team sports these days…
“Features a dark, moody palette”, Mavs in their emo phase? Luka signing up to join the black parade?
“Ornate detailing of the heaters…” Really, Cleveland? Really?!
Nike has had some – well, let’s just call it for what it is – “out there” explanations/rationale for various uniform features over the years.
But right off the bat, with the Hawks: I’m sure this is the first time I’ve seen a number (or number font technically, I guess) described as representing a “demeanor”. Like…how, even?
About to check out the other 29 and fully preparing to be simultaneously amused and bemused.
I often wonder the point of all these jerseys. If I bought one, I’d spend half the time telling people what team it is I’m wearing. Like Houston, if it was a 1980’s jersey that just said Rockets everyone would know the jersey. So WTF is H-Town to people in New England. No one would know what that was, part of wearing a jersey is expressing your fandom to everyone and wearing these weird jerseys defeats that purpose.
England waited 247 years until it finally had the chance to reap its revenge for the revolution. And it did so in the perfect moment, by contributing the “colour” of the boundary stones fencing on the uniform of our Nation’s Capital’s team.
Am I the only one who liked the Memphis unis? Loved the abstract simplicity.
The kings are great as well.
I really like the simplicity and it reminds me of the DeLorean Motor Company logo.
Most of these are straight to the garbage material. But….I love the Pistons one. A Bad Boys inspired uniform was long overdue.
I was never a big NBA fan to begin with, but they’ve totally lost me. Now when I see an NBA post, I just scroll down hoping there’s at least a picture of a can at the bottom of the article.
I noticed that all the announcements omitted the advertising mark on the jerseys, as if Nike and the NBA were saying we know the ads look terrible, so let’s leave them out to make the jerseys look better and cooler. If the ads don’t belong on the release, they don’t belong on the Court.