New Women’s Basketball League, Unrivaled, Reveals First Uniforms

[Editor’s Note: Today we have an article from our own Jamie Rathjen, who’s going to give you the rundown on the uniforms for a new women’s hoops league, known as “Unrivaled.” Enjoy! — PH]

Unrivaled, the new women’s 3-on-3 basketball league starting soon, revealed its first jerseys for its six teams on Thursday. The teams — Laces, Lunar Owls, Mist, Phantom, Rose, and Vinyl — all have “Basketball Club” after their names, no locations, and share a basic jersey layout.

The league is the brainchild of WNBAers Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart and appears to be filling a couple of niches. The first is that 3-on-3 is a growing part of the sport that now has its own competitions, including the Olympic ones that you might have watched. Unrivaled is a bit different because unlike a normal 3-on-3 court, which is half a regular court with only one basket, they’ll be using a two-ended court that is a little smaller than normal.

The second, which Stewart hinted at when the league was founded, is that it intends to let WNBA players stay in the US during the offseason, and make it viable to do so, instead of going to play in other leagues where they tend to get paid more. It’s recently become harder for them to travel abroad because the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement now has a “prioritization rule” that requires players to attend training camp, which likely overlaps with part of other leagues’ schedules, or miss the following season. The mass winter exodus abroad is already a thing of the past in the NWSL — I can remember back in the day it seemed like a couple dozen players would head to Australia each offseason — and it appears basketball might join them.

Let’s look at the uniforms from Under Armour. Most of what we have to go on so far is a short video that only shows one jersey from each team hanging in a locker room, although based on what surrounds them it appears each team will have a colored and white uniform. Every team also has the same ad below the front numbers. The league posted some media day pictures this weekend, but largely of Rose players, so they didn’t show anything that isn’t already covered here.

Laces

We have a very Oilers-esque color scheme to start with, paired with a number font that looks decidedly generic in comparison. It does have a faint blue line running through the center of each number. I’m not a gigantic fan of white on light blue, but the red outlining is better than nothing.

Lunar Owls

White and purple is Lunar Owls’ thing, although fascinatingly their other jersey appears to be black with gold based on the picture at the top of this post.

Mist

Still dealing in light blue, now we have darker blue as a companion, which is a better choice. Mist have already added an extra ad to their jerseys, which the teams seem free to do.

Phantom

I’m not getting great vibes from this one, because the “Phantom” script is really reminding me of something you could have picked out in Word and the number font is equally familiar. The script also seems a little small compared to the other teams’.

Rose

I’m not sure dark green is a color I’d associate with roses, especially since they come in so many bright variations, but at the same time it’s not a ridiculously common one for a sports team. The secondary color is definitely peach, which is even more interesting. It’s a color scheme that’s ripe for having that peach color replace a white jersey, but social media posts have shown a white jersey with green accents and peach-colored numbers. Oh well.

Vinyl

We are only afforded a quick shot of Vinyl’s red jersey, but enough to see the little sound waves emanating out from the numbers. That’s a cool touch and it’s not cheapened by every team doing it like the PWHL’s rear-number patterns.

Unrivaled’s first season starts Jan. 15 in Miami.