The Patch

Let's face it. So far this season, the Wizards stink. It's either poor coaching, poor roster assembly, lack of effort, lack of caring or all of the above which has gotten the team off to a 3-9 start through last night's victory agains the Miami Heat in southern Florida. Tied with the Atlanta Hawks was not where I thought we'd be 12 games in. 

By the way, it's definitely at least poor roster assembly.

From the opening tip against Miami in the season opener at Capital One Arena on October 18 to the final buzzer last night at American Airlines Arena, the mood of Wizards fans and Wizards Twitter has been like a pendulum the last month. Calls of "Fire Ernie!" (they should, and I mean now) and "Fire Scotty!" (they should soon unless...) and critiques like "John Wall looks out of shape" (he does) and "the Wizards don't like each other and that's why they look like they don't care" have turned to guarded optimism after just one road win against a maybe playoff hopeful. I actually saw one tweet this morning proclaiming the Wizards as a title contender. Not sure how beating the 2018 version of the Miami Heat gets you to championship hopeful but that's where some Wizards fans are right now. I feel their pain. Truly.

And don't worry, that situation will likely correct itself this week.

About a week and a half ago, the Wizards released some news about their jerseys for the young season and it was about as good and bad as the team has been so far this year. Just hours apart the team revealed this year's fourth jersey (dubbed by Nike as the City Edition just like last year) and then announced they would be joining 27 of the other 29 teams (Indiana and Oklahoma City are the lone holdouts) in the NBA in slapping advertisements on their threads for this season and presumably forever.

A close up look at this year's Wizards City Edition jersey.

Let's cover the good really quickly then move on to the point of this post. This year's City Edition uniforms are exactly the same as last year's but instead of being mostly white, they are mostly black. I think Wizards Twitter about exploded when these things were revealed. In the midst of pretty much the maximum level of angst experienced by Wizards fans (the team was 1-6 at the time) this year's fourth uni got almost universal praise. I'm not as psyched about black uniforms as just about everyone else in the D.C. area I guess. I think they are OK. If nothing else, the Washington Monument shows up way better on the sides of the jerseys than it did on the whites last year. It's also going to be really difficult for me to not buy the truly excellent City Edition black with red D.C. flag t-shirt that Nike brought out to accompany these things though.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about jersey sponsorships. I knew this day would one day come when the Wizards would cave and let some company pay some money to slap their advertisement on the Wizards jerseys but it doesn't mean I have to like it. This stinks. It's purely a money grab because the league can. The press release announced this news as "more than a patch" and they are absolutely correct. It's a violation, it's unnecessary, it's ugly and it just plain sucks. I thought when the Wizards finally did this that I would roll over, having been desensitized to this stuff by 27 prior franchises. I didn't. It's truly terrible. I hate it. The only thing worse about the jersey patch is I know there's no going back.

And yes, this is all about the principle of the thing. It's not at all about GEICO, the company who the Wizards are allowing to befoul their jerseys. I actually love GEICO. When I was first trying to get car insurance for myself they were the only insurance company willing to let me buy insurance despite a flawless driving record and I've been with them ever since. But their name does not belong on my basketball team's jersey any more than GE belongs on the Boston Celtics jerseys or Zatarain's belongs on the New Orleans Pelicans jerseys or Bumble belongs on the Los Angeles Clippers jerseys. 

OK, the Bumble thing is pretty appropriate.

The Wizards aren't the only team afflicted with the GEICO ad on their jersey. The brand new Capital City Go-Go also get an extra large sponsorship from my favorite insurance company on their kit every game this season. I'm not so upset about this branding. There's no way the G-League makes money for the NBA owners and ads have been rampant in the NBA's development system for years. I actually find the GEICO wording less objectionable than the "Capital City" wording on the team's blue jerseys. Could they have found a worse font for these things? I'm not sure they could.

But the team that really got screwed by this partnership (remember...it's more than a patch) are the Washington Mystics. Sure, advertisements looks awful on NBA jerseys but if we had to have them, they couldn't really have made them any smaller and the GEICO fits in pretty well into the space on the left shoulder. Ditto for the Go-Go branding but at least they put the GEICO at the bottom of the jersey which allowed the name of the city (sort of...I still don't like the Capital City name) and the team nickname to be where it belongs on the shirt. But the Mystics jerseys look like they are playing on the GEICO company basketball team.

Look, I get the WNBA takes a back seat to the NBA and apparently also the G-League. But unless you have some kind of great seats or some kind of great eyes, it's going to be difficult to tell that you are rooting for the Mystics or the city of Washington when you are at a game. Sure the name (in logo form) is still on the jersey, but it's about as big as the GEICO logo on the NBA version although the font size is way smaller. 

I know the Mystics are not the only WNBA team to have this happen to them. In fact most of the teams are using this same strategy of having the sponsorship across the top of the uniform and the team logo on the shoulder. Notable exceptions include the Chicago Sky who have sold advertising space both across the top of the jersey AND on the shoulder (and so have no team identification at all) and the Las Vegas Aces who are using the NBA model with the team name where it belongs and a small advertisement on the shoulder.

The reason the Mystics can't use the Go-Go style of design is that the bottom of all the WNBA jerseys features the Verizon logo. But I don't see why the Mystics can't force the GEICO logo into the same spot that the NBA places it just like the Aces have done. How much is GEICO really paying for the WNBA sponsorship anyway?

Call me old-fashioned. Call me resistant to change. Call me just plain old and stuck in the past. But I don't like these things one bit. I've been watching teams playing European soccer with very large advertisements across their chests for as long as I can remember and I guess I accept that. But there's no good reason for the NBA to do this except to generate slightly more (and I do mean slightly more) revenue. I hate this. Thank God they are still selling jerseys without the ads. Although considering the Wizards performance the last couple of years, I'm sticking with my old Adidas John Wall jersey for as long as I can I'm thinking.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Fire Ernie!