Wanting to ensure maximum exposure and rapt attention for the culmination of months of intense, meticulous work, the Charlotte Hornets unveiled a brand new alternate uniform on Thursday night — six minutes before the start of the 2015 NBA draft.
[Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
In the event that you missed this momentous advance in athletic aesthetics, here's a look at how the Hornets introduced their new "Buzz City" look:
Here's Charlotte forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist showing off the alternate threads at the Hornets' Thursday night draft party:
A couple more up-close-and-personal looks at the new uniform, via the Hornets:
Aside from the notable replacement of "Charlotte" and "Hornets" with "Buzz City" as the primary wordmark across the chest of the jerseys — a move that follows in the footsteps of the Detroit Pistons introducing "Motor City" jerseys, the Portland Trail Blazers' lovely-in-lowercase "Rip City" threads and the Golden State Warriors' dearly departed "The City" throwbacks — the most eye-catching element here is probably the persistent presence of short sleeves, a stylistic choice that has been widely panned by fans and players alike and from which the league has been considering moving away over the past year.
Buzz City backers who believe in the right to bare arms might be in luck, however, according to UniWatch's Paul Lukas:
The Buzz City alternate features black base color with teal and white typography. It has sleeves like all of the NBA's "pride" uniforms, though Hornets marketing executive Seth Bennett said the uniform's basic design could be maintained "with other silhouettes," which suggests that the team might change the jersey to a standard tank top at some point down the road. There's widespread speculation that the league will move away from sleeved jerseys when Nike replaces Adidas as the league's uniform outfitter for the 2017-18 season.
A more traditional version of the "pride" uniform, with that slick black backdrop that really makes the teal and white accents pop, would look awfully cool on the court. Finding that manages to be simple and clean while still looking fresh and carrying over some of the neat elements — the V-neck, the big logo on the waistband, the callback stripes — that made the Hornets' wholesale rebrand so successful last summer seems like a coup; as we've learned in recent weeks, if you try to move forward while simultaneously reaching back to the past, you can wind up going nowhere.
“The Pride uniform is designated to celebrate something local to a team or region, and it was obvious to us that it needed to commemorate Buzz City,” team president and chief operating officer Fred Whitfield said in a statement. “Buzz City is about the enthusiasm that our fans have for our team and our city, and this uniform allows us to put that feeling into a physical banner that our players display.”
Even better: the Hornets now have a tank to carry this brand new buzzing banner into battle.
- - - - - - -
Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don't Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, "Like" BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment