Random Observations

It's been about a month since we've seen either John Wall or Markieff Morris on the court in a Wizards uniform and I was actually enjoying the team the Wizards are fielding these days. They were scrappy, they were trying hard, they move the ball well and they were winning, albeit at home more often than not and not necessarily against the cream of the NBA crop. Then they played the Cavs this past Tuesday and the Spurs two nights before that. Defense? What defense? Two big issues still loom over this team apart from their defensive prowess in the last week: (1) they have to (and I really mean HAVE to) fix that salary cap situation unless Ted Leonsis is on board with exceeding that luxury tax line next year and (2) I'm sure that Scott Brooks is going to hit the reset button on everything next season when Wall and Dwight Howard will be back in the starting lineup.

Do I still think the team should sell at the trading deadline and give up on their chances to make the playoffs and get out of the first round? You bet I do; they won't make it out of the first round anyway. In the meantime, I'm still heading to games will be rooting as hard as I can for the team.

Over the last couple of months it seems like there have been a bunch of really odd or random things happen around the court at Capital One Center. None of these things warrant a post in and of themselves so I've been saving these up for a compilation of random thoughts type post. I've now got enough to write a full post I think. Here goes nothing.

Why Do They Do That?

In about the first or second game of the season this year, I noticed the Wizards pep squad or ground crew or whatever they are moving a beige cloth over the center court logo and the two lanes under the baskets at either end of the court right before the starting lineups were announced. This didn't make any sense to me from my seat in the lower level, especially since they sometimes had to wait for the opposing team to get out of the way down at the far end (from my perspective) of the court so they could cover that lane.

Then I sat upstairs and lo and behold, there's some fancy pregame laser projection during the introductions. I assume this is part of the arena upgrades that happened this summer since I haven't noticed it before this year. I get that most people in Capital One Arena are likely not confused about this but I was and it's not a bad pregame effect. Definitely an improvement over past years. The view of what it's like from Section 415 is in the cover photo of this post.

Crowded House

I rarely hang around for halftime shows at Capital One Arena. I'm usually too busy heading somewhere in the building for a halftime beer and have been conditioned over the last few years to getting nothing but non-professional halftime performers (Red Panda, I miss you!). But earlier this month against Milwaukee I stuck around and witnessed what has to be the single most dense mass of people I've ever seen on a basketball court in person. It was some kind of coordinated cheer session with multiple multiple different groups. It was pretty stunning. See if you can see any reasonable space in the picture above. I can't.

Random Jerseys

Every so often, you'll see someone at a Wizards game with a completely random opponent jersey that just makes you wonder what was going on in their head to make them buy the jersey they have on. On MLK Day this year I walked by some dude wearing a number 7 Brandon Jennings Pistons jersey (I complimented him on his choice!) which amused me because I don't think Jennings' time in Detroit was especially notable. And yes, I do have Brendan Haywood, Andray Blatche and Chris Singleton jerseys in my closet at home.

But the one that got me most in recent memory was some guy in the second or third row at the Bucks game in early January wearing a T.J. Ford number 11 jersey. I get that Ford was a pretty high draft pick for the Milwaukee franchise back in 2003 but he only stuck around for three years (he was injured one of those three) and those were not particularly remarkable in any way. But his last year in a Bucks' jersey was 2006 for crying out loud. So this guy's been either stashing this thing in his closet waiting for his next NBA game to roll around or he wears this often to go see the Bucks play. Whatever's going on, this guy has my complete and utter respect. This is solid.

Where's G-Man?

For the first time in like forever (at least that's the way it works in my memory) during the Philly game (great win by the way) on January 9, the Secret Service Dunkers made an appearance. I don't really go for any sort of timeout type entertainment but there's something about these guys that I love. Might be the name and the uniforms, which I think are super creative and super Washington, D.C. It's certainly not the dunking, which I guess is what they are really all about. 

They were introduced that Wednesday night not as the Secret Service Dunkers but as G-Man and the Secret Service Dunkers. They even had that name on the large red mat they land on after they dunk. Only...no G-Man. There hasn't been any G-Man in years has there? Didn't the Wizards kill him off like four or five years ago? I can't remember seeing him recently and he wasn't there during the game against the Sixers. Yet he was introduced and his name is on the equipment. Is Ted just too cheap to spring for a new pad?

Beal vs. Wall

In the offseason three years ago, Monumental Sports installed a Wizards Franchise History display that showed the history of the team's primary uniform all the way from the franchise's inception in Chicago in 1961 to today. Or at least through the 2015 offseason anyway. The display is shown in the photograph above and features jerseys all the way from Walt Bellamy with the Chicago Packers (number 8 top left) to John Wall (number 2 top right) with today's team.

In the last couple of months or so, the team has swapped out the current primary road uniform (what Nike now calls the Icon Edition) for this season't City Edition, the black version of last year's white City Edition featuring not Washington or Wizards across the chest but The District of Columbia. It makes sense, right? I mean you want the hottest version of your unis in a case like this I guess so more people will go out and buy one.

The only curious thing is they switched John Wall's jersey out for a Bradley Beal jersey. Because Wall's injured I guess???

I'll end with that. Milwaukee up next Saturday night. Assuming it's going to be a little more difficult this time.

Wall out. Beal in.

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!

Jersey Patches

I can't believe it's March and I haven't published a blog post about the advertising patches that have been popping up on NBA jerseys all over the United States (Canada too, I guess, but just in one spot, not all over) in the last six months or so. I'm using last week's announcements by the Dallas Mavericks with 5miles and the Los Angeles Clippers with Bumble as an excuse to remedy that situation. Before I start ranting in earnest, let me say the Clips couldn't have picked a more perfectly named partner.

Want to know how I feel about advertisements on jerseys? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Quite frankly, I hate them. But I'm going to try to be a bit more nuanced in this post and soften my stance a little. We'll see how that goes.

Maybe a little history is in order. If you watch soccer on TV, you will probably struggle to recall a time in the last 30 years when the teams you were watching did NOT have a sponsor company's name emblazoned across their chests. That's because sponsorship deals for European football clubs have been standard fixtures since the 1980s. I can't recall any across the jerseys of my favorite teams growing up in England but that's because the first club in major English soccer latched on to this idea in 1979, the year I left the country.

I don't, despite my earlier statement about hating these things, object to advertisements on soccer jerseys as much as I feel I should. Maybe it's because there are, in most cases, just one company's logo on the shirts. Maybe it's because traditionally there were no jersey numbers of team names on the fronts of the shirts. Adding a logo was just filling blank space on the shirt. It didn't require any adjustment to the other parts of the uniform.

For the most part, this single endorsement rule has held up, although recently, there have been secondary advertisements popping up on the sleeves of some teams, like the Huddersfield Town jersey shown above. I like this less. Some sports have gone to a more extreme level. My favorite rugby league team, Wakefield Trinity, puts on jerseys for each game that are covered in advertisements. How many are there on that jersey? Nine? Ten? More? It's craziness. Way too much.

Soccer is, not surprisingly, the dominant sport in England and most of the rest of the world. Over the last three plus decades, revenues from jersey advertisements have poured in to add cash to the vaults of clubs whose games at the time when they were adopting advertisements on their kits were largely not televised. I'm sure they helped out a ton financially.

Fast forward 20 or so years to the United States. Major League Soccer, the third or fourth attempt at professional soccer in this country, decided to introduce jersey advertisements into their league. They are the first major professional sports league in the USA to do this. For the purposes of this blog post, I'm considering major sports leagues here at home to be MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MSL and WNBA. Debate that list if you feel you need to.

For me, this introduction of jersey advertisements in this league in 2007 is fairly seamless. We as consumers were already softened up to this idea by the rest of the world and, again, the ads are not taking away from anything on the uniform. There's nothing where the sponsor name is going.

Four years later, the WNBA would introduce advertisements onto their uniforms. I'm surprised it took that long. Honestly, if there's a league in need of all the advertising revenue it can handle, it's the WNBA. These advertisements probably literally saved a few franchises from going out of existence. My philosophical objection to a single (or maybe two in some cases) advertisement on a jersey to help a franchise or league from going bankrupt is waived. I'm all for this.

Then last year, on the heels of one of the richest television deals in major sports history, the NBA decides it needs more money and allows its 30 teams to negotiate deals with sponsors to advertise in the space on the jersey on the left chest. This comes in conjunction with the new uniform deal negotiated with Nike which includes, for the first time, the right for the jersey manufacturer to add their logo to the NBA jerseys.

The Lending Tree advertisement is unreadable from a distance. Too many letters and not enough space.

So first, let me say the NBA does not need this money. Maybe that's not a good argument for them not pursuing it. But it's totally unnecessary for the NBA team's owners to do this from a monetary standpoint. 

Second, I know it's not requiring anything moving around on the uniform, so based on my argument about soccer jerseys, I should be OK with adding something, right? Not so much. There's too little space in the spot where the league has designated the ads be restricted to. Some look just plain awkward and some are about impossible to read. Does that make the ones that fit well or are graphically clear more acceptable? Oddly enough and surprisingly, for me the answer is yes. Before you get all up in arms about this, just read on. There just aren't many that satisfy this criteria for me.

So far, 21 of the NBA's 30 teams have elected to sell advertising space on their jerseys. The Golden State Warriors are getting $20 million per season from Japanese company Rakuten. That's the richest deal by far. The second most money generated from a club selling its soul for money is a reported $7 to $10 million per year to the Cleveland Cavaliers from nearby Akron, Ohio based Goodyear. It goes down from there. The split of this money by the way is half to the players, a quarter to the rest of the teams and a quarter to the team whose unis sport the logo.

Among the 21 companies who have bought in, there are some banks, some software companies, some internet apps, Western Union, Harley Davidson, Disney, Fitbit, a couple of food companies and the charity arm of a software developer in addition to the two companies mentioned in the paragraph above. Are any of these sponsorships acceptable in any way to me? Reluctantly, I have to say yes.

Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age but I find from a local business standpoint Harley Davidson (in Milwaukee),  Zatarain's (in New Orleans) and Disney (in Orlando) appropriate for sponsoring these teams. I've written posts in the past on this blog ranking team names. I've always thought highly of teams with names with local origins. I'm appreciative of teams making local connections with businesses, although I hate the orange of the Harley Davidson logo on the decidedly non-orange Bucks jerseys and Disney is becoming way too big and powerful. Too much Disney these days.

I also appreciate the Utah Jazz partnering with a charity (5 For The Fight, which raises money to combat cancer) and on a totally different level the Philadelphia 76ers partnering with StubHub and the Minnesota Timberwolves hooking up with Fitbit. At least these two products and services relate to sports or athletics in some way.

Hate to say it but if I had to have a jersey patch on my uniform, the Goodyear patch is one of the best.

Graphically speaking (I'm an architect after all), I can't get on board with many of these jersey ads because they either just don't fit well into the space provided (particularly the horizontal advertisements with a lot of letters like the Charlotte Hornets' Lending Tree patch which is just unreadable) or the colors clash with the team's colors a la Harley Davidson in Milwaukee. In the end I've boiled this whole thing down to two acceptable patches: the Goodyear one on the Cavs' jerseys (I appreciate the way the company altered their colors to the Cavs' admittedly awful color scheme) and the StubHub one on the Philadelphia 76ers unis. Both are acceptably shaped to fit into the available uniform space and have some local or topical tie to the franchise or league.

I am grateful that the Washington Wizards have not sold out and allowed some company to post their logo on our gorgeous uniforms (particularly the home whites). It makes me feel like there is something worth believing in about this franchise in the midst of a mini-collapse without John Wall. On the other hand, I'm dying for some influx of cash so die-hard fans like me don't have to pay more for season tickets next year. In the end though, even with $20 million extra cash like the Warriors have per year and which the Wizards won't get, spreading that revenue out between the players, the rest of the teams and 20,000 fans or so to discount season tickets would only get the average fan a savings of $250 per seat per year. I think I'd rather have our unis advertisement free. Although any help I can get on season tickets would be appreciated too. Less than two weeks to decide.

Stocking Stuffers

First of all, Happy New Year to everyone. Let's see if the new year does anything to cure the Wizards of this malaise they seem to have been in for this entire season. Spoiler alert: it likely won't. This will continue to go on for another month or more despite Markieff Morris' confident assertion that good things are coming and all will be well soon.

I took that last couple of weeks of 2017 off from this blog for some R&R and while I was (virtually) away, there were a handful of Wizards fan mini-events that happened around the holiday week that are worth probably discussing as a group but not necessarily worthy of their own posts. Yes, I'll touch on the continuing underperforming vs. teams with losing records but I'm pretty much glossing over that issue, much like the Wizards gloss over how to play hoops vs. inferior teams and then come up with excuses after those same losses. To tackle that issue in a blog post right will be too painful so I'm sort of skipping it. Let's go chronologically shall we?

Winter Solstice (December 21)

For the second straight year, the Wizards were good enough to host a holiday party / happy hour for season ticket holders in the Etihad Lounge on the floor level of Capital One Arena. Before you non-season ticket holders get too jealous, don't.

Yep, there were games and prizes and free holiday cocktails and free food. But the prizes were sort of left over surplus (I played trivia and came away with a shooting sleeve and a Wizards plastic bracelet; no idea what I do with those) and the grub didn't measure up to the usual Etihad Lounge fare which is typically pretty good. Notably bad were the fairly stale cupcakes with the wizard jumping over the crescent moon/basketball logo (maybe they were the same vintage as the now-retired logo?).

The couple of free holiday cocktails were a nice gesture but I could have done without the $11 price tag on the 16 oz. Budweisers. I'm complaining about something I didn't have to go to, I realize. This stuff's all part and parcel with the cost of tickets. Free or $5 beers would have been appreciated. Maybe next year?

Christmas Eve Eve Eve (December 22)

Just ten days after losing in Brooklyn to the miserable Nets, the Wizards made a return trip to New York to avenge their mid-December loss. Except that they didn't. Avenge it, that is. They were down 40 at one point in this game! 40!!!! To the Nets!!! Bradley Beal claimed after the game that teams were targeting the Wizards because the Wiz are an Eastern Conference contender or some such nonsense. You don't get down 40 to a team as bad as the Nets because of some onslaught of desire to topple one of the better teams in the league. The Wiz aren't serious and Beal's post-game narrative is a complete cop out. We need more locker room accountability.

But...I said I wasn't going to go into the Wizards' hopelessnesses against bottom feeders. Nope, what I want to talk about here is our hometown television coverage.

During each Wizards TV broadcast, announcers Steve Buckhantz and Kara Lawson highlight some plays during the game that become sponsored by NBC Sports Washington's advertising partners. These are ideal times for the folks that pay advertising dollars to the station to have their products mentioned alongside a Wizards highlight from the game. The issue I have here is that the highlights for the Honda Drive of the Game and the Campbell's Chunky Maxx Performer that night weren't of Wizards players doing good stuff but were instead of Nets players taking it to the hoop for a bucket (uncontested I might add).

What's up with that? I realize I'm picking about the most devoid of Wizards highlights game of the season but there were some highlights that were equal to Joe Harris (top photo of this post) or Spencer Dinwiddie (photo immediately above) scoring at will. I'm also not in favor of homer-ism to the max (or Maxx if you are Campbell's) but the TV station that covers the team ought to be able to have a policy of assigning these advertising moments to actual Wizards highlights, shouldn't they? I'm disappointed in NBC Sports Washington here.

By the way, is Marcin Gortat really pushing Otto Porter into Dinwiddie in the pic above? Or is it just a caught in the moment glitch? I mean he's shoving him with two hands, right?

Christmas Eve Eve

One night after the Wizards got drubbed by the lowly Nets, they headed home to take on the similarly bad Orlando Magic. After an embarrassing loss, the Wiz were up for this game and cruised to a 20 plus point victory. It was routine and it should have been.

The excitement I expected this game was the Wizards' unveiling of their fourth jersey or what Nike is referring to as the "City Edition". Based on the schedule on the Nike website (clip shown above), the jersey design, which was somehow leaked for every team on the NBA 2K18 videogame the previous week, was supposed to be released that night. Instead of getting a look at a maybe motivated but just equally as likely unmotivated Wizards team in their new kit, we got a look at the blue unis one more time (still missing the stripe that would make these threads killer). The conspiracy theory I started working on in my head about the players hating the City Edition turned out to be a fabrication. Turns out the "Jersey Dates Subject To Change" warning on the Nike site was true.

Christmas Day

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post summing up my thoughts on the first quarter of the season. One of my peeves about the first 20.5 games was the emergence of the Celtics as a legit Eastern Conference contender after turning over basically 3/4 of their roster while the Wizards stood pat / maintained consistency (depending on your point of view) and were struggling at a little better than .500.

So of course the underperforming Wizards went up to Boston on Christmas Day and knocked off the Celtics, the first time in more than three years (including four losses in the playoffs last year) that they have accomplished that in Beantown. Go figure. It was one of the finest performances in the season to date in a series of quality road wins. Surely this would be the turning point, right? Right? Right?

But that's not the important part of Christmas Day. I deliberately did not ask Santa for any Wizards stuff this year considering the state of play so far. I got one Wiz gift anyway and it's pretty much the best Wizards gift ever. Yep, it's a John Wall Funko Pop figurine. I love these things (we may have Jon Snow and Ghost figures at home already...OK, we do) so it's awesome to see the NBA partnering with Funko to get some of these made for fans like me. I love it. Not much more to say here other than he's not wearing the Nike uni. The Easter egg on the bottom of the shorts is intact. See here for more on that.

The Day After Boxing Day (December 27)

I'm  not very good at conspiracy theories. The day after a quiet (NBA-wise) Boxing Day saw the official release of the Nike City Edition jerseys. The Wizards' entry? A white on white offering sporting "The District of Columbia" where the "Washington" and "Wizards" appears on their other three jerseys.

It's not the worst thing in the world. Like a lot of folks out there on Twitter I'm not thrilled with the "of Columbia" part of the jersey but also agree with a lot (maybe the same lot) of folks who have made the point that people don't refer to D.C. as just "The District" much. It's generally in keeping with the theme of the Wizards' other jerseys (unlike some other team's City Editions) which I love. I'm not crazy about the marble-esque pattern on the sides of the jerseys but it's not going to keep me up at night.

I do LOVE the D.C. flag on the "belt buckle" of the shorts. This is one of the truly great flags in the world. If I ever get a tattoo (I know...I'm almost 50), 80% chance it's a variant of that flag. I think we got away with a good design here. I'm going to hate the Wiz wearing these things at home because deep down inside I believe teams should wear home unis with the team nickname on them, not the team city. But since Nike's blown that whole thing up with the abandonment of home / away threads, I'm going to let it go.

As an aside here, New Era (one of the NBA's official hat partners) has released a series of hats to mirror the City Edition unis. I hate the faux marble veining on the hat and I object to white hats in general (they show dirt although marbling will admittedly counter that) but I'm seriously thinking about one of these.

So that's my essay on the holiday season 2017, Wizards style. Back in action Wednesday against the Knicks. We have to win that one, don't we. A little more confidence at this point after the Bulls win.

Custom Jerseys

This month, I've written about the new Nike jerseys that are about to hit stores any day now. I've also written about how the basketball jerseys I have hanging in my closet tell the story of my Wizards fandom. For my third and final jersey-related post this month, it's time for a bit of a rant. And it may offend some people who have actually gone out and done this. That's not my intent. I'm just genuinely confused by this stuff. And hey, look, I almost did it too.

 

When I graduated from college (and by that I mean like when I graduated for good at the age of 25 after seven and a half years of higher education), I treated myself to something I'd wanted for a while: an authentic New York Jets jersey. Go ahead and mock. I'll pause while you do...

Done? Good. This was 1994, before you could go onto the NFL store website and just order one and have it show up a couple of weeks later. This was a big deal and it wasn't necessarily easy to do.

 

There was a store at the Landmark Mall in Syracuse that I knew could order any jersey you wanted, so when I finally got one of my first paychecks after securing my first real job, I headed there and ordered my own custom Jets jersey. I got it in green and of course I got my favorite player: Number 57, Mo Lewis. After the guy taking my order told me he had no idea who Mo Lewis was, he asked me what name I wanted on the back. And here's where I faltered and made a mistake. I got it without a name.

 

Know why? Quite simply this thing was expensive (over $100 at that time) and what would I do with it if Lewis was traded or got hurt or just decided to hang it up? I decided it would be more fiscally responsible if I got it nameless, then I could just wear it for years and it would still be authentic and I wouldn't be wearing some has-been's jersey. The problem of course is that without an actual player's name on the back it isn't authentic at all. 

 

The irony here is Mo Lewis, of course, played another 10 seasons for the Jets and made two All-Pro teams. He ended up being one of the greatest linebackers in Jets history. And the Jets completely rebranded before the 1998 season so my jersey was obsolete long before Mo was.

 

The one saving grace the day I made that decision? I didn't put Hopwood on the back of the jersey. Know why I didn't do that? Because there has never been a Hopwood that's played for the New York Jets, let alone worn number 57. In fact, there's never been a Hopwood that's played in the NFL at all before. Why get a jersey that's clearly a fake? 
 

I can't imagine these guys intended to spell Anthony Davis. I'm guessing dude in blue is Davis.

So now that I'm an obsessed Wizards fan, I've obviously changed my jersey philosophy. I own jerseys with Haywood (it's close, right?), Arenas, Blatche, Butler, Singleton, Webster and Wall on the back. Each jersey speaks to a specific timeframe of a few years. Yes, all but one of them are obsolete. And my choice of players and sizes (my Arenas jersey is a size 50; no clue why I bought it that big) makes it impossible to wear any one of them as a meaningful throwback. However, none are blank and none have Hopwood on the back.

 

So here's my question: why do people buy basketball jerseys with their name on the back when there is clearly no player with that name that has ever donned that particular jersey? It honestly just makes you look like you have this fantasy that you are a pro ball player but the fact that you clearly aren't and never will be is a little sad. Am I wrong? Am I just being mean? I can be mean at times without knowing it. I'm just really confused. I know I already said that.

 

I can understand it on kids and the last thing I want is to be called a bully for picking on some kid in a Wizards jersey with the name of someone (meaning him, his immediate family and everyone ever named the same last name as him) who's never played in the NBA. They get a pass. They really do. But why do adults do this? 

 

I can understand people deliberately buying a jersey of a player who's not very good just because they happen to have the same name as you and play on your favorite team. You better believe if the Wizards signed some dude named Hopwood and kept him on the roster for like one game, I'm having one of those jerseys made for me. And I'm wearing it. A lot. I mocked some dude at on Twitter last year for wearing a Nick Young jersey when the Lakers were in town only to find out his last name was Young when I talked with him after the game. I'm totally cool with him doing that.
 

Non-custom jersey that actually IS a custom jersey. I retracted my mocking on Twitter after talking to him.

But a number 7 Knicks jersey with Davis on the back? Or a 12 Elghonami Knicks jersey (not sure if there's something about Knicks fans here...)? I just don't get it. Can someone please explain it to me? If you are going to drop some cash on a custom jersey, find a player whose game you admire and spend your money on that one. Take a chance that he may not be there forever but show up and support that player (and the team) and show that you really mean it. It's not about you. It's about supporting the team. That's all I have to say and that's the end of the mean-ness on this post I promise.

Having said all that, I did see some guy in Japan this past summer with the ultimate custom jersey. After wolfing down some street food in a place nicknamed Piss Alley (we didn't know that at the time), I saw a guy in a custom number 12 soccer jersey (there are 11 men per side in that sport in case you didn't know that) with the name "Supporter" on the back. Awesome. Simply brilliant. I can get behind that kind of a custom jersey. The rest? I don't know.



Best custom jersey ever.



New Threads (Sort Of)

If you visited the NBA Store's website any time in the last couple of months, you might have been greeted with flashy graphics advertising low low prices on jerseys with messages urging you to "Hurry! Get them while they last." Those sales included official Adidas player replica and swingman jerseys with discounts up to 30% off.

30% off NBA jerseys?!?!? Are you kidding me??? What a bargain, right?

Well...sort of.

True, you could have snagged yourself a brand new jersey at 30% off, as long as the player and team you wanted were available. But next month they won't be the current version. That's because next month Adidas is out as the NBA's jersey provider of choice and Nike is in. That might mean jerseys look a lot different or it might not. Depends on which team you are rooting for. And yes, what's happening at the NBA online store is a fire sale. There's going to be nothing the NBA can do with the old Adidas jerseys next month except to give them away.

Whether it's the league's doing or Nike's doing or a combination of both, the folks up at Nike are taking a little bit of a different approach to jerseys than did their predecessors at Adidas. Instead of a home (typically white) and away (typically a color) with one or more alternates, maybe a throwback and a sleeved jersey, Nike's going with what looks like four or five non-sleeved jerseys (thank GOD!) per team.

In August, Nike released the initial round of unis for each team, what they are referring to as the Association and Icon editions. According to both the league and Nike, the home team will no longer be required to wear the white uniforms at home but can instead select which uniform they prefer on any given night with the visiting team just required to wear a uniform of sufficiently contrasting color. I'll get back to this subject later but I thought it was already this way. The Wizards had plenty of blue nights at Verizon Center last year and even at least one red night, didn't they?

Beyond the Association and Icon jerseys, Nike will release some throwbacks for some franchises (the Wizards are apparently NOT one of the teams receiving a throwback) and then a couple of alternates, most likely without sleeves as things should be. Last Friday, Nike released each team's Statement jerseys, which for the Wizards are blue alternates they've sported the last couple of years (and STILL missing the red stripe that I want to make these things way better). And there is already some buzz about the as yet unveiled Wizards fourth kit: apparently the stars and stripes unis that most people loved last year are not in the cards this year.

For now, let's focus on the August release of the Association and Icon jerseys. I think the universal reaction from fans on Twitter to the Wizards Nike first release was something to the effect of "there's no difference from the Adidas jerseys from last year!" My response to that is yeah, what were you expecting?

I mean, sure, maybe this was a chance for a complete re-brand (and the Minnesota Timberwolves did just that - even though they probably shouldn't have) but Nike taking over the jersey contract for the NBA didn't mean they were going to redesign all the uniforms league-wide. In the case of the Wizards, the team just invested what I assume is a good chunk of change for a new look just six years ago. And they look gorgeous; I still believe the home whites are the best unis in the league. Why on Earth would we change? I'm thrilled with the status quo.

Having said all that, there are a couple of Nike implemented tweaks that bug me.

The first of these is the stripe down the side of the uniform. It stops at the waistband on the Nike version whereas it didn't in the Adidas kit. Sure, I know, it's such a minor detail that it probably doesn't matter (and let's face it, discussions about stripes on waistbands on NBA uniforms really DON'T matter in the grand scheme of things) but that continuity was important to me to maintain the vertical flow of the uniform. The waistband stops that motion and divides the uniform quite clearly into a jersey and a pair of shorts.

The other one, though, really does matter (not really; but it matters to me). One of the most clever details of the Adidas Wizards uniforms was the way the vee cut in the shorts worked with the star and the block of color (white on the red shorts; blue on the white) in that location to form a W in the negative space at the bottom of the shorts leg. It was such a clever detail in an overall well designed uniform. It's the easter egg in the uniform. The Washington Post even gave it a little praise in their initial review of the unis, although they also implied that neither John Wall or Jordan Crawford could find it (the Washington Times reported something similar). You can see the Adidas shorts in the photograph above on the left.

What Nike has done is make the Wizards uniform fit their template and that template has the vee cut in the shorts offset, which slides that feature out of the space below the star removing the cut in the underside of the W. You can see a portion of the new Nike shorts in the photograph above on the right. In the new shorts, the hidden surprise in the uniform is destroyed. And honestly, that sucks in my opinion.

So yes, the Nike uniforms are pretty much the same as their predecessors. But they are not exactly the same. They are, in my opinion, slightly worse than the Adidas version.

The Statement jerseys I think are fine, because they don't have the same hidden W on the shorts. The only complaint fans could have levied about these kits is just like the Association and Icon editions, they are pretty much exactly the same as last year's jerseys. See my rant about "what were you expecting?" above if you want to know how I feel about this. True, some teams like Golden State and Oklahoma City got something a bit new and different. Again, there was no reason for the Wizards to change. Besides, there's still one more jersey release to come. And we know it's not a stars and stripes or a throwback.

Now...about that whole Association and Icon thing and teams being able to pick which color they wear at home. There are traditions about uniforms. I'm not one of those stuck in the mud guys who can't keep up with the times and adapt to change. But I will say there's value in traditions. One tradition about uniforms in the NBA is that the home team wears white. I love our white uniforms. I think they are the best in basketball (and yes, I do mean even better than the stars and stripes unis). Honestly, I don't care if the Wizards wear red or white or blue at home or on the road. I think we should wear the whites as much as possible because they are works of art; that's just me. But I do care about another uniform tradition and wearing red or blue at home will mess that one up.

In American sports, there is a custom where the home team wears uniforms with their nicknames at home and the name of the city on the road. I guess the logic here is fans in their home arenas can identify where the visitor is from by the name of the city on their chest but can't necessarily do that if the nickname in on there. At home, it doesn't matter because everyone in the arena presumably knows what city they are in at the time.

Now, not every NBA team follows this custom. The New York Knicks wear uniforms with "New York" on them whether they are at home or on the road. The Los Angeles Lakers do the exact opposite, preferring to not identify that they are from L.A. but instead just use their nickname. I guess you can pull that sort of thing off when you have won 16 titles. Even teams like the Wizards have bucked the tradition: the team didn't wear Washington on their jerseys when they first changed their name from the Bullets. It took the 2011 rebrand to get us some road unis with Washington on them.

Which is sort of precisely my point. Now that you have fixed that issue, let's keep it fixed. So, criticsms of the shorts on the Nike uniforms aside, I'm imploring the Wizards to continue to wear white at home (the jerseys with Wizards on them) and a color, whether it be red or blue, on the road.

That's all I got to say about this re-issue or lack thereof for now. When the fourth jerseys are released, I expect I'll have some comments on those. Until then, I'll wallow in the lost W on the Association/Icons and the missing stripe on the Statements for a while. Wallow. Wallow. Wallow.