Last week, we had another of Mike Chamernik’s “Question of the Week” series, the response was great, and Mike is back again with his next question.
by Mike Chamernik
All the NBA teams have officially unveiled their annual City Edition alternates over the last week.
If you’re not familiar, City Edition uniforms are one-year alternates that honor local culture or an aspect of team history. They are typically louder, more colorful and more experimental than the primary home and road unis (or “Association” and “Icon” unis, in NBA lingo). This is the eighth year of the program, which began when Nike became the league’s outfitter in 2017.
Despite the hoopla around every leak and unveiling, many City Edition uniforms are often criticized for being unfamiliar, gimmicky or outright ugly. The ephemeral nature of the program also makes it feel like a corporate cash grab by the NBA and Nike.
I want to be positive, though. What City Edition uniforms do you like for 2024-25? For your favorite team, what previous City Edition jerseys do you enjoy? Was there a set that was popular in your team’s fan base?
For reference, you can browse through old NBA uniforms at Basketball Jersey Database.
Can’t wait to hear the readers’ responses! OK guys…fire away!
The original Suns “The Valley” and the Jazz “Red Rocks” uniforms were excellent. The Jazz should have kept that color scheme and even rebranded to something along that theme.
Utah Canyons, or something similar, with their red rocks theme uniforms as the main design would have been great.
Would also have let the Jazz nickname return to New Orleans where it actually makes sense.
Love this idea.
Those were really good. Utah’s especially.
I’m not a Heat fan, but to me, the list of best City Edition unis starts and ends with the Miami Vice sets (except the gradient one). If the Heat didn’t already have such a strong history and visual brand, I would’ve been fully on board with them changing their team colors to black, pink, and powder blue.
Forgot about those. They’re right up there with the Suns “The Valley” and the Jazz “Red Rocks” IMO
I like the Sixers spectrum uniforms and an alternate design. Though the multicolor panels don’t fit the red, white, and blue team colors and theme. Perhaps mash up the spectrum design and font with the stars along the side panels from their standard uniforms and you’d have a great full time home and road set for the team.
Tbh the current raptors city jersey is great. I also enjoyed the first two ones Toronto had (the black/white and gold chevron jersey with NORTH on the front). I don’t really like the template as their primary style, but as an alternate it was a fun design
Celtics fan here, I think if you ask 100 C’s fans what their favorite alternate has been in the team history, a lot would say the dark green Bill Russell CE’s from 22-23. those were well designed, honored a legend, and still looked like the Celtics enough to make sense.
I kinda like the ones that look like a Celtics championship banner
To borrow from Jimmer, my 5 for this year:
5. Clippers
4. Kings
3. Sixers
2. Warriors
1. Dunkasaurus
&1. Knicks
In Central Florida, the orange Magic jerseys definitely are the most popular, although I prefer the black w/ blue pinstripes from 2 years ago
link
Love the Clippers CE unis this year. I don’t get what the Knicks are doing with their offset lettering.
I The junk it’s a visual play on the fact that NYC is New York, New York.
Detroit Piston’s St Cecilia uniform. It caused me to research the historical gym and all the cool pickup games played there.
Paul discussed these Pistons unis — and I was one of the people he spoke to link
Mike this is fantastic as your insight and the hyper links helped me learn even more. Growing up in the 90s with pistons being in Auburn Hills, I think caused a lot of people in my generation to not learn the history of basketball in Detroit.
I didn’t know about St Cecilia’s either! It was cool learning about it, through a uniform
agreed Mike!
HEAT CULTURE IS TUFF
Garbage
I like the original Jazz red rocks and the Jazz one from last year. (Which they promoted to icon for 2025 on)
As a Suns fan I like their new City uniform. Even though technically Phoenix isn’t a “valley”.
A lot of them are great.
I’ve never really loved the Raptors’ CE uniforms. This year’s might be their best yet.
I have a D-Wade black Miami Vice jersey and Brooklyn’s original CE Coogi jersey (Kyrie).
The Nets really embrace expressionist art
As a Clippers fan I like this year’s City uniform well enough. But I absolutely LOVED the old English SoCal gangster version a few years ago. That one seemed regionally specific, unique to SoCal culture.
Those unis (designed by Mister Cartoon) were part of a branding effort meant to associate the Clippers with REAL Los Angeles and Angelinos. Not sure how well it’s working.
I dislike the City Editions as a concept, but that being said, I don’t actually dislike the new CEs for Utah, Memphis, San Antonio, or Detroit. If I had to pick a favorite, I guess I’d choose Memphis because I instantly recognize the connection of the font to the city.
My home team is the Wizards, which should go a long way to explain why I don’t have a favorite team and why I’m not a big NBA fan. Looking back at their earlier CEs, I’d pick the 2020/2021 jersey because I’ve always liked the old Bullets logo with the letters reaching for the ball. I’d give a slight edge to 20/21 over 19/20 because I prefer the logo and jersey number being the same color.
I sort of root for the Celtics more than other teams – mostly because I lived in LA for many years and never warmed to the Lakers and the Celtics are the Lakers biggest rivals. What’s interesting is, as with the Wizards, the 2020/2021 jersey is my favorite of their CEs. I don’t love that it has both the name and city, but it’s instantly recognizable as being inspired by their old championship banners. Also, unlike most of their other CEs, there’s no BFBS.
I like Sacramento and Philly’s unis. Ditch the rest.
I’m not a big basketball fan, so I have different standards for what I like in basketball than in “my sports” of baseball and curling. That said, my favorite of the NBA City Editions is the Celtics. But I’d hate to see a neon color like that in baseball.
Memphis Grizzlies
Good answers, everyone!
I’d prefer the Bucks to stick with green. But the blue unis they have this year look nice. I leave this comment all the time, but I’m confused as to why the Bucks have adopted royal blue as much as they have. Like I know it’s a reference to the lakes and rivers or whatever, but still.
I’m in Chicago, and I don’t think any of the Bulls City Edition jerseys have caught on. Never see any fans wearing a CE jersey when I’m out and about.
I went back through the data base and looked at every single one of these and the conclusions I came to are: I can’t believe how many of these really aren’t any good, and many of the ones I remember being good I was probably just swayed by how bad the others were that season. Off the top of my head after looking these over: original Miami vice, suns the valley, Utah red rocks original red version, Philly heather gray with the circle of stars on the front, timberwolves with MINN and the star motif down one side, Orlando sublimated outer space with only the flying sparkly ball logo on front, if I had to extend it to this years: Nola herring”bone”, and Charlotte mint greens. Overall programs I’d give props to San Antonio and Toronto for having the most decent ones, but many of them were repetitive or just alternate color ways of other unusual they had (making it camo doesn’t really make it “city”). All in all I’d say that calling this the city edition created two problems: a lot of cities are going to inspire a new unique and nice looking uni every year, and many unis fail the brief by being state or regionally specific rather than city pride.
Sooner or later there ought to be a Philadelphia uniform with “1776” on the front.