One on One: The New Uniforms

While the NBA is a year-round soap opera (especially in Cleveland), there is a brief mid-August lull in the news cycle to recalibrate the hot take cannon. It’s at this time that LeBron heads to Cedar Point for kids and coasters, and Zach Lowe visits Croatia to recharge his batteries for another year covering the thunderdome.

Carson Zagger and myself decided to go one-on-one to cover some non-Kyrie or Griffin news with a breakdown on the Cavs new jerseys. Join us below in the comments section to offer your takes on the new duds, and what you would have liked to have seen instead.

Cory: Now that you’ve had a week to digest the Cavs new Nike jerseys, what are your thoughts?

Carson: Insert “splendiferous barfing cup” clip here. Honestly though, is there a reason Cleveland teams are constantly being punished with horrible new jersey designs? First the Browns took one the most classic looks in sports and added ORANGE!!! retina burning highlights and stylings that made them look like mediocre high school uniforms. At least the brown wasn’t changed to British khaki or something.

Now the Cavaliers jerseys are suffering a similar fate. Gone are the now-iconic (in Cleveland, at least) unis, that the team, ya know, wore winning the their only championship ever. The Cavs’ mustardy gold and royal wine uniforms were sleek and universally well received. They were symbolic of the LeBron 2.0 era, the most successful in Cavs history, and could have become a lasting part of Cavaliers lore. Heaven forbid if Cleveland strived for the continuity and nostalgia of the Los Angeleses, Bostons and Chicagos of the world.

I understand that changes were inevitable as the Nike wanted to make the jerseys their own. Even so, the new Cavs jerseys look like something designed for a cheesy sci-fi movie set in the far future where they play a game called “spaceketball” or something. They are trying too hard. The over-saturated colors and sharp, angular designs are harsh on the eyes.

Carson: How about you Cory? Hopefully you have a more positive view on them than I do.

Cory: We’d be a horrible pair for a segment on ESPN’s hot take afternoon argument block. I hate them. I’m jealous that Jaqen H’ghar didn’t take my eyesight before they were revealed. They are the worst possible conclusion that I could have imagined. They look like what Robert Zemeckis would have dreamed up in 1988 as futuristic basketball jerseys for Back to the Future II.

Carson: Ha. Glad we’re on the same page. What would you have gone with for the new jersey styles?

Cory: Well, I’m not holding this entirely on Nike. They’ve nicely added to the NBA wardrobe with their overhauls of the Clippers, Pacers and Suns uniforms, with the Pacers being my personal favorite. The disappointment for me is that there’s so many possibilities the Cavs could have gone with that would have been a winner.

You made a good point in your opening that the Cavs have never tried to forge a lasting identity with their jersey branding. They’ve had TEN major overhauls of their uniforms in 47 seasons, and most of them could have been subtly modernized to become a J.R. Swish heat check show stopper rather than The Jetson’s/Medieval Times mashup we have now.

While I didn’t know years ahead of time how the plot mysteries of Lost would conclude during the final season, I had a guy feeling that the last frame would be on Jack’s eye, just as the show began. Why not have the Cavs jerseys tie back to their debut duds from the 1970-74 era. They were the franchises first threads, and I don’t think they’ve ever topped them. They were forged during the counterculture era that immediately followed the barrier breaking 60s, before fashion was destroyed during the boxy shoulder pady androgynous gakedout 80s. An update of the cursive script, short lengthening that wouldn’t get a girl sent to the principles office and perhaps a slight trimming augmentation is all that these would need to be one of the best of the new batch. Also, no other design imaginable would fit the Goodyear logo better than modernized feather fire.

An update of the Cavs rarely seen 1980-83 jerseys would have been a surprise, but if done right, they could have been the Cavs version of the new Pacers uniforms. One of the primary reasons I hate the new uniforms is that they have too much going on, and while the new designs lettering looks good on a logo, it looks too Tennessee Titansy on threads.

I loved the Oklahoma City Thunders vertical alternate jerseys, and this would kind of play to that. A pair of stripes to separate the team name from the number would give it symmetry and balance. You’d have to update the lettering, and sleeken the stripes, but this one could have been a winner in the right graphic designers hands.

Or they could have just kept it relatively simple. This might be the best mashup the Cavs have thrown out there. A combination of the Cavs historic color scheme of wine and gold and the design from the Daugherty/Price era that got so many of us into hoops in the first place. I may be in the minority here, but these look better than the 80s threads that they were inspired by.  I do prefer the previous red incarnation of this model that the team wore in 2009, but I can’t see the team dropping their wine for red any time in the foreseeable future.

Why not let a killer alternate jersey graduate from a featured player a full-fledged repertory cast member? A gold version with red lettering would be showstopper too. A page one rewrite of the shorts would be necessary as with most of these.

Carson: Just about anything other than what they went with would have been better.

Cory: The new jerseys are a fitting fabric interpretation of Iman Shumpert dribbling a ball off of his foot. So what are your thoughts on the sponsoring logos on jerseys this season?

Carson: It just annoys me on principle. Essentially, owners who’s teams’ values have grown exponentially are choosing to ugly up jersey designs that have existed for decades just to make a fast buck. I probably shouldn’t care as much as I do about it, but I hate the very idea of advertising on a jersey on an aesthetic level. No other US pro sports has ever done this. These are professional uniforms we’re talking about here and the logos look completely unprofessional—though small, the logos clutter what was the clean face of a jersey. And all of this comes just a couple years after the sleeved monstrosities.

The thing is, the Goodyear logo itself isn’t even that bad. It’s a cool winged foot and it’s been associated with Northeastern Ohio, but being placed opposite shoulder of the Nike ‘Swish.” is just too much. If it was one or the other I probably wouldn’t be all bent out of shape. That’s just the world we live in. Hey, at least we aren’t Kings fans with almonds on their jerseys.

Cory: Almonds are my favorite nut, so I will give them that. At least we finally have something we don’t completely agree on. I’m good with the logos. Sure the franchise values have skyrocketed, but the owners won’t see that profit until they sell the team. Gilbert gets more criticism than any other NBA owner, but spending has never been an issue for him. Gilbert lost $40 million during the 2015-16 season owning the Cavs. I’m good with the logo being there if it offsets his loses.

I too actually really like the logo itself. The colors matchup, and the symbolism of the winged foot of Mercury fits the game of basketball better than half of the teams actual logos. The Goodyear Wingfoot logo actually has a crazy long history history with NEO. It was developed in 1900! Hopefully that staying power will have an influence on the Cavs organization and they’ll get on the same page and find a proper jersey design and stick with it.

I get that there’s a little league kind of vibe with sponsored uniforms. Perhaps I don’t mind them because The Bad News Bears was my favorite movie as a child, and Chico’s Bail Bond’s on the back of a Bears jersey that I’d gladly wear until the stitches gave out. The film had such an influence on me that I quit little league after I found out that they wouldn’t give us beer.