Good morning, Uni Watchers! Welcome to the last day of 2024. However you plan to celebrate (or not celebrate, as the case may be) the New Year, may the new year bring you peace, joy, and happiness
UW pal/contributor/author Leo Strawn, Jr. joins us again today, with more looks at basketball uniforms from yore. If you missed Part 1, click here or Part 2, click here.
Enjoy!
And now, here’s Leo with…
Hoops, Volume 3
by Leo Strawn, Jr.
I’m Leo…welcome to my world!
This edition will feature more sixties and some seventies NBA.
This United Airlines ad from 1968 not only contains logos from the two clubs (one NBA, one ABA) named Rockets, but also a Warriors logo in odd colors.
Always loved these mid-1960s Sixers unis.
How many of you remember the horizontal stripes on the SuperSonics shorts?
What about the Warriors trolley car on jersey backs in the late-sixties/early-seventies?
Do you recall the NBA Rockets playing in San Diego?
In my opinion, the Hawks should go back to this color scheme and striping. Team name on shorts, too.
Oh, what might have been…
These awesome Bullets unis were honored as throwbacks for good reason, in my opinion.
Due to the width of the stripes, a short first name was placed outside the stripes or if a player wanted to use a long last name, as Dave Stallworth did, the lettering had to be placed partly in the striping and partly not.
Nice striping and number above “Buffalo” on the 1971-73 Braves jersey. Notice the ‘E’ (single quotation marks) on back, over the last name of Elmore Smith’s jersey.
I’m not going to apologize for stating that these unis were absolutely horrendous. Note to self: I need to pick up some ketchup and mustard from the store.
Here’s a Cavaliers pic of THE standout, Jim Cleamons. Cleveland’s mid-to-late seventies uniforms were not much of an improvement over the previous version.
The last photo for today is from a sad day in Cincinnati. Johnny Green is walking by the scorer’s table during the last home game for the Royals in Ohio. Cincy beat the Baltimore Bullets at the Cincinnati Gardens on March 24, 1972, 132-114. They not only won their final home game, but also their final game as the Cincinnati Royals in Cleveland two nights later, 135-122. Oddly, they won their only game in Dayton that season v Buffalo, 108-97, on February 24. A 12-game losing streak in December/January killed any hopes they may have had for their last season in the Buckeye state, but they finished with a 20-20 record at home, 3-2 at Cleveland and 1-0 at Dayton. Maybe they shouldn’t have played outside of Ohio…
In half a fortnight, I’ll begin to share pics I have collected from the league with the patriotic basketball.
Until next time…
Cheers!
Thanks, Leo! Great stuff as always — can’t wait for Part 4 (and those ABA unis!).
Readers? What say you?
What’s wrong with the Cleveland uniform? “Ketchup and mustard” as an insult/critique is a bit tired…
Well the “ketchup, mustard, and mayo” patchwork around the arms and neck isn’t helping.
That’s not the one that was criticized, although it’s described as “not much of an improvement”.
I don’t necessarily agree with the critique (and despite the photo’s hue), but wine and gold aren’t terrible colors. The uni design, however, is pretty awful. The “tail” under the Cavaliers script is pretty awful. link
I believe it’s supposed to represent a feather from the hat worn by an actual cavalier (link)
Those same colors (wine and gold) would look GREAT once the team switched to tiled striping. (link and link).
So — at least IMO — the design is what’s wrong with the Cleveland uniform, not the colors. But it is a terrible design.
YVVM
I agree. I never said the colors were the problem, I said it was the uniform that was horrendous and I didn’t like the striping around the early seventies uniforms, either.
The ketchup and mustard line was a joke. We always referred to them as ‘ketchup and mustard’ when I was a kid. I guess it touched a nerve in someone, though.
I called the Houston Rockets ketchup and mustard in the 1970s. The Cavs were more like BBQ sauce and mustard.
The mid-to-late 70s Cavs with the tiled striping were tied for my favorite with the Stepien-era unis.
That early 70s look…no thanks. Wasn’t a fan of the feather.
And I most definitely wasn’t using ketchup and mustard as an insult. Loved the 70s and 80s Rockets.
IMHO, the baseball script with the extra flair was terrible and there’s no point to having six yellow stripes on the side of the shorts, three on the waistband and two around the legs. Compare that with the cleaner look of the Knicks shorts in the same photo. I think if the Cavs were going to be innovative with their shorts, they would have looked better with vertical stripes all the way around, à la Harlem Globetrotter or Rochester Royals.
“Ketchup and mustard” as an insult/critique is a bit tired…
I’ve never said that on UW before.
Nevertheless, from the first season they wore them, that’s what everyone I knew described them as.
I agree that the striping is a bit excessive.
I guess I’m just getting tired of the same jabs being thrown at specific colour combinations – red/yellow is always “ketchup and mustard” or “McDonald’s”, red/green is always “Christmas”, black/orange is always “Halloween”, and of course, the infamous BFBS. Nothing personal.
No worries. To be fair, I should have explained why I didn’t like them.
I’m not opposed to shades of red and yellow together, e.g., I love the Dominque-era Hawks uniforms, but my favorite Atlanta unis are early seventies Pistol Pete blue/green set with the cool striping, so I’ve always wanted to see them go back to that color combo.
In all honesty, as a kid that’s what my friends and I called those Cleveland uniforms: Ketchup and mustard. It wasn’t meant as an insult. To me, that’s no different from everyone calling the mid-1970s/mid-1980s Astros, “tequila sunrise”, which I don’t think anyone uses as an insult, either.
I’m probably harder on Ohio teams than others when it comes to (what I consider) good design. In hoops, I only remotely liked one uniform of the Royals when they were in Cincinnati and the same is true (so far) of the Cavaliers. (Just wait until I get to hockey. I will be even harder on the Jackets than I was on the Cavs.)
Anyway, we don’t have to agree for me to enjoy the conversation!
Cheers and I hope you have a Happy New Year!
GTGFTS
4 Dec 1960
“It ain’t over till we say it is!”
Lions 20, Colts 15
link
We just had that one about 2 weeks ago, no?
I thought so too.
Yessir. Lenny Moore made an amazing, diving catch in the last minute for what appeared to be the winning TD, but the Lions shocked the Memorial Stadium crowd into silence when Tobin Rote and Jim Gibbons connected for a 65-yard TD and a 20-15 win on the subsequent drive.
GTGFTU
29 Nov 2021
WFT beats the Seahawks on MNF 17-15
Seattle is all white and no Bobby Mitchell memorial patch for The Team, so it is not the 2020 matchup.
Love those early NBA logos. There was a uniqueness to them that is no longer the case. Today, all logos have a cookie-cutter sameness. Assume that’s because they come from the same place and the NBA has a mile-long list of requirements that stifle individuality.
It’s because they all think of themselves as multi-billion dollar corporations. They’re very self-serious.
Thank you Leo for those photos from the most creative decades the NBA has ever known, the 60’s and 70’s. My heart beats for those unis. What a wonderful way to close out 2024. Counting the days to your ABA extravaganza! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too! I was a huge ABA fan and I’m looking forward to sharing some ABA photos.
but also a Warriors logo in odd colors.
Multi-color printing was pretty dodgy in those days; could it have been an attempt to render the Warrior logo in blue, gold, and red (which we see in one of the Warriors’ recent throwback uniforms)?
They had made the switch to blue/yellow by then and the blues and yellows on other logos are plainly visible, so yes, that was a problem in the days of 4-color printing, but I don’t think that was the case on this ad.
link
That was an odd choice for a logo to use, though. It was never a primary logo, as far as I know.
Man, I wonder what people thought of that Bulls logo at the time. Just like with music… anything ahead of its time, stands the test of time.
Today’s GTGFTU photo of Washington perfectly illustrates that if you choose to go mono (as much as I wish no one would, white excepted), how essential pants stripes are to making the look better.
Oh how I loved those Baltimore Bullets unis! I sure hope you’ll feature the equally cool Nets uniforms when you focus on the NBA.
Gotta admit I forgot the Rockets started in San Diego. Makes the team name even odder. Then again, anything space-related was trendy then.
For what it’s worth, I don’t mind the Cavs’ uniforms at all.
The 1972-thru-end of the ABA Nets are going to get their own edition. Those were absolute beauties.
I see there are fans of those Cleveland uniforms on UW. Sometimes, unusual designs aren’t appreciated until later generations and maybe that’s the viewpoint of readers with the positive comments about those uniforms.
I was a kid when Cleveland got their expansion team and I never was a fan of those uniforms from the first time I saw them. The only Cavs uniform I’ve ever remotely liked was from the Lebron era. (But not because of him, I’m not a Lebron or NBA fan and I haven’t watched basketball since the Magic/Bird era.)
Cheers!
The San Diego Rockets were the other NBA team that, for a while, had a horizontal stripe across their shorts. The Houston Rockets did a throwback a couple of years back. That stripe was the one thing people didn’t like about it.
There was actually quite a strong aerospace industry located in San Diego in the 1950s/60s – specifically the Atlas missile program that was adapted for boosters (including the Mercury orbital launchs). It was an unusual move that the team moved to another city with even stronger ties to NASA and the space program.
I never really noticed how NBA players used to just look like regular dudes. That SD Rockets team photo could be my dad and a bunch of his friends.
Bring on the ’71 floridians, Leo!
It’s on the way!
Pacers stripes, too!!
I’ve always liked the mid ’70s Cavs uniforms with the color blocks down the side, though I realize they may not be everyone’s cup of tea. They coincided with their first brush with success.
The tile striped uniforms are my all time favourite Cavs uniforms, they were brought back occasionally during the Lebron years and they still looked awesome. Compare that to the current practice gear that they are wearing during games. Thanks for another wonderful article, Leo!