Jerseys ON SI

I see we have some new players in the NBA jersey arena. Its ethos, and our fight, has been centered around one key principle: home basketball teams wear white at every level of the game, in every league in the world. It is quite simply a basketball tradition, without it being a written requirement. What Nike has done has not only oversaturated the market with mostly unpopular designs, but uniforms that get left behind after just one season. The constant turnover has one goal: sell as many jerseys as possible, at any cost, even at the expense of the franchise’s brand equity. It is a statistical fact and focus group tested/proven that children like new jerseys, and their parents buy them. Non-white City Edition/Classic uniforms are often worn at home, it has a minimum appearance mandate because of the NBA’s partnership with Nike, forcing the away opponent to have to wear their home whites when they’re chosen. Every NBA game that’s played where the home team is not wearing white is a papercut to the sport’s tradition. Not the NBA’s, but basketball’s. It won’t be a tradition that’s destroyed overnight, but as children grow up and it becomes more-and-more accepted because it was never something they cared about or understood, the home whites will eventually be perceived to be just another option. You will rarely, if ever, see an NHL home team in their away white sweaters. Even though it’s the opposite of basketball, NHL/hockey have always maintained the tradition of the home team’s fashion look. I like to think they do this because it is something their paying customers appreciate and continue to support with their wallets. What the NBA doesn’t understand is the sales spreadsheet may suggest that this new jersey strategy is working because so many people are buying them, but what they are sacrificing to achieve these short-term results is the legacy of the sport that made them so cool in the first place. This business strategy, undoubtedly, will lead to apathetic fashion, market dilution, and diminishing returns with no ability to revert back — because that culture, both literally and figuratively, will be dead.

Adidas could never dream of such an elegant shoulder fit

Back on the field this fall.