Earlier this morning, the Minnesota Timberwolves unveiled their new City Edition (CE) uniform for 2024-25. I expect the NBA to be unveiling a number of City Edition uniforms this week; we recently saw unveilings for the Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets and Washington Wizards, all within the past few days.
As I’ve mentioned before, it seems like NBA designers are running out of ideas for CE uniforms — not surprising given they’ve needed to come up with new ones every season for almost a decade — with some teams given to “reusing” old designs with color swaps. The Timberwolves fall into this category as well. The new CE uniform is pretty much just a color swap of last year’s uniform.
I’ll try to keep this and future CE reviews short, unless a team has really broken new ground with a design.
We’ll start with the hype video.
what's cooler than being cool?
ice cold. ❄️ pic.twitter.com/LO8p1WFs3s
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) November 11, 2024
As you can see, the uniforms bear more than a passing resemblance to those introduced last season. And the “theme” for this one is “Ice Cold.” *sigh*
According to the team, “An encapsulation of Minnesota winters, the uniform evokes images of ice-covered lakes under a moonlit night sky. This year’s uniform is the culmination of a two-year story focused on the integral role lakes and ‘lake life’ play in Minnesota.”
“When it comes to the cold of winter, Minnesotans don’t just survive, we thrive,” said Timberwolves and Lynx Chief Marketing Officer Mike Grahl. “We’re excited to complete Nike and NBA’s two-year City Edition story arc with a celebration of lake life in Minnesota – ice cold style.”
The uniforms are primarily white, with a sublimated black/blue pattern at the top of the shoulders extending down just past the wordmark. “MINNESOTA” is in white capital letters, in a sans-serif font, outlined in dark blue. Numbers are to the left and slightly below the wordmark, also in white and outlined in a dark navy. The sublimated pattern is supposed to replicate that of ice forming on a Minnesota lake.
The rear of the jersey features player NOB in black, with very subtle blue sublimation throughout.
Both front and rear jersey numbers feature tiny perforations.
Shorts are mostly white, and have a slight blue sublimation pattern on the left side, while the right side of the shorts has the T-Wolves CE logo.
It’s difficult to see, but the shorts have a white stripe, on which the words “Land of 10,000 Lakes” is pressed into the stripe. This also appears on the shoulder stripes.
The waistband is white, and there is a white graphic of the state of Minnesota at the front.
“Land of 10,000 Lakes” is also printed just above the jock tag.
While I actually like these uniforms quite a bit, I continue to question the need to introduce an entirely new (which is oftentimes just a reworked old) uniform every season. And as we’ve seen, the T-Wolves are basically running back last year’s design, with the blue and white switching locations. It’s not an exact color swap, but it’s pretty close.
The Wolves will wear the new CE uniforms 23 times this season, including 15 times at home. They will make their on-court debut this Sunday against the Phoenix Suns.
The Wolves will also unveil their City Edition court on Sunday. The court will be wrapped in black and feature the cracked ice design in the lane. The midcourt logo will appear frozen over as well.
You can read more about these “Ice Cold”/”Iced Out” uniforms here.
Your thoughts?
They’re beautiful! Why does Minnesota come up with nice uni concepts, but the worst flag?
I like the flag. What do you want on there, a bear murdering a pioneer?
Never thought of that but that would be cool!
Their new flag checks off all the boxes for a good flag:
few colors
simple enough for a child to draw
no seal
easily identifiable
What don’t you like about it?
White letters and numbers on a white background. Makes me want to scream.
Why does Ant look like an NBA2K Create-a-Player in that first shot?
These suck hard. Court is cool.
Why not put “Land of 10,000 Lakes” on the chest?
Losing hope that I’ll ever see a sublimated print on a uniform that doesn’t look incredibly cheap. The sublimation process is cool, but man, do most of them turn out looking like something you could go buy off the rack at Walmart for $12.
Absolutely! My first thought was that they ordered these from Temu.
The shorts look almost invisible.
These are getting uglier year by year.
The fonts look like they are from Microsoft Word v3.0
I actually don’t mind it for something “out there.” The micro-print “minnesota” is just stupid. Also, when will we end this straight across lettering and return to cursive (probably never since its not being taught in school and is probably closer to Chinese or Cyrillic in terms of being understood by today’s youth) or arched lettering, which to my untrained eye looks much more imposing for a sports team.
Cursive is still being taught in school.
Enough of sublimation and its gradients, this process cheapens every garment. But I am not supposed to like or buy these uniforms being an old man from abroad. The court looks cool, though (pun not intended).
More like Blood Clot Blue.