Following the massive NBA City Edition jersey leak, in which all 30 teams’ new City jerseys were splayed across social media, the Washington Wizards took matters into their own hands.
To refresh you memory, the original set of leaks showed only jerseys, which I reported on yesterday. But there have been even more leaks since that time, and one of the leaks also showed the Wizards City Edition pants. Here are looks at both of those:
The jersey:
The pants:
You’ll notice that the jersey (as were all) is shown at an angle that shows off the front design, as well as the left side. However, since this City Edition jersey will be asymmetrical, the leak didn’t show off the right side of the jersey — which is where most of the detail is:
if you're gonna leak our jerseys, at least show all the details 🤭 pic.twitter.com/fmIdIpPPsL
— Washington Wizards (@WashWizards) September 18, 2024
The stars and stripes pattern down the right side of the jersey matches up with the pattern on the leaked shorts. The new white jersey and pants appear to simply be a riff on the Wizards 2023-24 City Edition uniform, which was much more intricate.
Without the storytelling, the above might appear to be just a mish-mash of colors and patterns, but it actually sought to bring some Washington D.C. history to light at the same time. That uniform paid homage to Washington’s boundary stones, which many consider to be Washington’s first monuments. It may have seemed out-of-left field at first, but it did have a purpose (which was the entire point of the City Edition uniforms).
The new uniform for 2024-25 seem to be just a “cleaner” version of the prior City Edition. The “District of Columbia” wordmark is the same, and the Wizards logo on the pants features what appears to be the boundary stone in place of the Washington Monument, which is almost idential to last year’s logo.
But other than the color swap, it appears the new white jersey and pants will be pretty much identical to the 2023-24 Edition.
The 2023-24 uniforms may have been bold (even garish) in their color choices — but at least there was some storytelling to justify the design.
Will they simply rehash that story to describe the new uniforms?
As I mentioned yesterday, with a program that has been around for almost 10 seasons, requiring a new City uniform every year, teams/designers are going to run out of ideas. I’d say this uniform pretty much proves that point.
I’ll wait for the official unveiling to see how the team spins these. But I’m not getting my hopes up.
Your thoughts?
All that being said it looks a lot better than last years and at least I could figure out the story on this one a lot quicker than last years.
Last year’s was created in conjunction with a local historian who’s a STH. The guy also happens to be a massive blowhard who most of Wizards Twitter dislikes. So that hot mess of a uniform was roundly jeered. That Nike and the Wizards would run it back is unconscionable.
At the bare minimum I can say this uniform is cleaner and its colors at least somewhat mirror the team’s palette. But that’s all I have.
Should have gone all the way on the Boundary Stones and shown some weathering and a little iron fence around them
I’m glad they didn’t. This is definitely a ‘less is more’ situation.
Funny- it looks like it would pair nicely with that new Ole Miss helmet!
I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter!
Haha! Thanks! That’d be an odd newsletter!
“pants”
Emoji didn’t publish:
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As one of few people who publicly claim to be Wizards fans and almost certainly the only one on this site, I have some thoughts.
DC is a city of 700,000 people, many of whom work for the federal government, but most of which don’t. While I get that most people associate DC with politics, etc. there’s so much local culture here that would serve as a way better representation for a City Edition uniform.
I really hope Nike makes a visit to “real DC” sometime. And ffs, stop using “The District” on everything. Nobody here ever calls it “The District”. It’s either “DC” or “the city”.
Wait for it… wait for it… CHERRY BLOSSOMS!
Fellow DC Native here, and I live about a 15 minute walk from a still standing boundary stone.
I actually liked the theme. But also: This is not a surprise from Leonsis. Most of the owners of professional franchises don’t care about the cities they are in to even know about all of the people who are from there.
I mean, luckily we have the “Capital City Go-Go” but I wonder what else we could learn on that we haven’t so far.
National Arboretum Uniform? a Mumbo Sauce Uniform (I fully support this honestly), A Black Squirrel Uniform? A Panda Uniform in collaboration with the National Zoo? a Metro Line uniform (this seems obvious too). a Brunch uniform? LOL
Let’s go all the way back to the Bullets and Wes Unseld
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