G-League Logo Rank, Part 1

Now that I'm done with re-ranking the NBA logos for the third straight summer, let's tackle the minor league shall we?

I started writing this post months ago, knowing full well that I'd need to find something to kill the time this summer on this blog. I planned to make it a two-parter so that I wouldn't be tackling all 22 D-League (at the time) logos in one massive post. I figured I could reasonably tackle 11 each in two consecutive posts. I made a list from 1 to 22 and left it as a draft.

Since the time I started thinking about writing about the kids table league logos, there's been a lot of change. The Developmental League name is gone and replaced with corporate sponsored name Gatorade League. Gone too are the Los Angeles D-Fenders (reimagined as the South Bay Lakers) and the Iowa Energy (now the Iowa Wolves which is a tragedy of sorts). Of course the Lakers and Wolves (yawn! names) have revamped their logos but so have some other teams, and not all for the better. Finally, there are no longer 22 teams; there are 26. And all of a sudden two posts of 13 each doesn't sound so appealing to me.

So, with all that said, let's do this in three parts. And here's Part 1, which of course is the worst stuff in the G-League (I shudder every time I type that). Strap yourself in for some truly just not very good logos. It gets better. A couple of weeks from now when I roll out Part 3, your faith in logo designing will be restored because, in addition to some pretty terrible derivative logos, there are some gems in the G-League (shudder...that's the last time I'll write that out in this post).

26. Oklahoma City Blue

If you had challenged me to take the Oklahoma City Thunder's logo and make it worse, I'm not sure I could have done a better job than the team itself did when it rolled out its shot at branding their minor league team, the Blue (worst name in the league by the way). The parent team's logo, which features a triangle with bulging sides and some curved sort of markings behind, I believe is intended to reference the native Americans who called and call Oklahoma home. The overall effect, however, is underwhelming.

Two things about the Blue's logo (shown at the top of this post) here: (1) I'm not sure why anyone would want to copy the Thunder logo and (2) if you do actually like the logo, why make it simpler? Part of the problem with the Thunder logo to me is that it's too simple. Who knows, maybe I'm just looking for someone to add something to distract me from how bad this logo is. In the NBA, the Thunder are saved from the bottom spot because the Los Angeles Clippers rolled out a logo package a couple of years ago that is truly pathetic. There's nobody to save the Blue here.

25. Wisconsin Herd

A couple of years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks introduced a new branding that made their deer-centric logo package a little more abstract. Other than the fact that their primary logo looks like a deer head mounted on a wall, I generally love it as an improvement over their former look. It seems bold and modern and I love map based logos like the state of Wisconsin secondary logo. I don't love what the Bucks have done with that logo package as they have applied it to their minor league franchise.

First let me say that I like the alternate logo which is a stylized basketball with the letter W on it. But what is going on with the three-headed deer look? To me, this is either a deer with two smaller partial deer heads growing out of its shoulders or three deer about to do something very mean to the whomever they are staring at but the two deer in the back only have a single antler each. It looks like something out of a cheap deer-centric horror movie and represents the second logo of many in the G-League which are just manipulating the name and look of the parent franchise in a non-productive way.

24. Lakeland Magic

The Lakeland Magic have two official logos: one which is not sponsored and one which is. I don't like either of them but I especially don't like the sponsored one, which is the exact same as the non-sponsored one but with HomeValue.com at the bottom. I get that it's a way to make more money. I just don't get why anyone would want their branding to be this way.

As for the logo itself, I think the Magic got ripped off by someone putting a summer intern on their project. Seriously? A basketball surrounded by a black ring with some stars on it? I'm assuming this thing was a rush job and that they didn't pay much for it. I'd feel worse if they did. The Magic are the first team in this countdown who just named their G-League team after their NBA franchise. Predictably, I don't like this either; it's completely unimaginative. I know this list isn't about ranking team names but I had to mention that anyway.

23. Westchester Knicks

If the Westchester Knicks had just stuck to their guns here with their original logo when they entered the League, they'd finish a lot higher in this ranking. That's because their original logo was based on the old old New York Knicks logo that the home team (one of only two original franchises still in the location where they started) that featured Father Knickerbocker with a basketball.

To demonstrate how awesome their former logo was, I've included both the new and the old above. The current logo (on the left) is pretty much exactly the same as their parent team's logo except with "Westchester" in place of "New York". Boring. Yet, somehow in my mind better than the Blue, the mutated deer and a sponsored logo. Go figure. Supreme mediocrity somehow gets you 23rd out of 26 here. Who thinks James Dolan paid someone to come up with this logo? For the record, I do.

22. South Bay Lakers

Speaking of unimaginative retreads of an already-extant logo...let's talk about the South Bay Lakers (or the team formerly known as the Los Angeles D-Fenders). The Lakers haven't applied quite the same level of non-thought as the Knicks had, but it's pretty close.

The Los Angeles Lakers logo features a Lakers name apparently in fast motion forwards (or to the right on the logo) behind a gold basketball. The South Bay Lakers logo seems a bit more chill. Gone are the movement lines from the original perhaps because the junior Lakers and former D-Fenders have never won an NBDL (or whatever else you want to call it) title. But if the logo's come to a dead stop, the golden basketball has also transformed into a sun with an ocean below reflecting the sun's rays. How beach-y for a team that plays in El Segundo. The arena's not on the ocean but it's nor far off. The Lakers beat the Knicks here. Barely, but they do it. For the record, I like their secondary logo better.

21. Texas Legends

The logos that someone came up with for the Legends are not great but they show some imagination and that counts for something. I mean, look at the competition to this point for crying out loud. Let's take a look at their secondary logo first which is shown on the right above (the awkwardly fonted "TL" over a strangely patterned basketball graphic). I'll just say this sort of jumbo font logo isn't good and let's just move on. Some G-League teams haven't even bothered with an alternate look. The Legends shouldn't have either.

It's their primary branding that gets them some credit here. Yes, I know that the unevenly pointed star is a proportional nightmare; I assume it's intended to echo the star in the Lone Star State's flag. But honestly, I have to say before I started paying attention to the League's logos about six years ago (right before I made my first D-League road trip), I thought the logo was a cattle skull. So just for my mis-read which is I am sure the intended double entendre (or is it double voir?) the Legends get a win here. It's not elegant but it's effective.

20. Windy City Bulls

I know what you are thinking here. For the past three years (or for forever since I started publishing blog posts about logos over the last three summers) I've ranked the Chicago Bulls logo number one in the NBA. And the Windy City Bulls logo is pretty much the exact same thing, only with a kick ass map-based (which everyone knows I love) secondary logo to make the overall package even better. 

Well...yes and no. Pretty much the exact same thing and the actual exact same thing are different. And the WC Bulls' logo is beefier (pun intended) and less elegant than the original. The scowl is meaner, it's missing the red tipped horns from the original plus it's truncated. Don't get me wrong. The logo's not THAT bad and the secondary logo is awesome but the Bulls just get put down this logo because the whole primary logo just lacks any sort of originality whatsoever. Don't be derivative is the message for anyone trying to impress me with logos.

19. Greensboro Swarm

I love the Charlotte Hornets reintroduction into the NBA. I think the franchise's name is the best in the league; by and large I love their logo redesign over the old cartoon hornet from the original Charlotte Hornets franchise; and their honeycomb designed court is just terrific. I don't feel the same way about the Greensboro Swarm's copycat logos.

First of all, as I've already stated I hate all these logos that are just the initials of the team or city in large font therefore the "GS" logo just sucks to me. I feel the same way about the Legends' "TL" logo and I'll feel the same way about the Grand Rapids Drive's "GR" logo. They are simplistic and unoriginal.

But honestly, the primary Swarm logo isn't that great either. It's the same sort of hornet font that the big boys used to write the team's name and they have placed that name atop a hornet's butt. Not impressed. Two thumbs down.

So that's the bottom. There are 26 teams in the league so I've elected to do two eight team posts so I can have a top 10. Discuss what you hate about my opinions amongst yourselves (actually, nobody is going to do this and I know it). The next eight are up next week.

Frisco, Texas: D-League Assignment

After my overnight stop in Dallas, I was excited to head north to Frisco and take in my first NBDL game, a 3:00 p.m. matinee featuring the home Texas Legends taking on the Tulsa 66ers. Watching D-League ball is, after all, the primary reason for this trip.

Frisco is a suburb of Dallas located about 20 miles up the Dallas North Tollway. The area was first settled in the mid-nineteenth century along the Shawnee Trail, one of the trails used to drive cattle from their grazing grounds to the railway where they could be sold for slaughter. The present town, originally called Frisco City, was established as a stop on the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway which was built nearby the Shawnee Trail. The town took it's name from the railway which had given it life and later dropped the "City" from its name becoming simply Frisco.

Today, Frisco is one of the fastest growing communities in Texas, boasting about 130,000 residents. If I had to compare it to something around my adopted home town of Washington, DC, I'd say it's sort of like a more populous Reston, Virginia, an affluent suburban community 20 or so miles from the city with a town center with shops and restaurants and, in Frisco's case, three professional sports teams: FC Dallas, the Texas Tornado minor league hockey team and the Texas Legends. Frisco has managed to make itself into more of a tourist destination than Reston (which pretty much has zero tourist appeal; sorry, Restonites) through its sports teams and an active public art program. The highlight of the public art for me was a series of full size bronze cattle drive depictions paying homage to the town's and area's roots. They have clearly spent a lot of time and money on these things and it pays off, although I have to wonder how much time people spend appreciating these things. There is also signage documenting the history of cattle driving through the area.

The Texas Legends have been playing in Frisco for three seasons. They started out as the Colorado 14ers in 2006 attempting to join the Continental Basketball Association but they never got started in the CBA. They were technically one of the five teams that jumped from the CBA to the NBDL the year they were founded but, unlike the other four, the 14ers never played a single game before joining the D-League. They lasted three seasons in Colorado before being sold to the Dallas Mavericks organization who moved the team to Frisco after a year hiatus. Nine of the 16 current NBDL franchises are either owned by or affiliated with a single NBA team. The Legends were the one of the first to be owned by an NBA team.

The reason I wanted to make this D-League trip is to see how life in the NBDL compares to life in the NBA or get at least as much of that as I can see from a seat in the arena. My perspective on live professional basketball games is formed from my experiences in Verizon Center and the other basketball arenas I have been to in Boston, New York, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Phoenix, Chicago, Atlanta, Indianapolis and, most recently, Dallas. All of those arenas seat around 20,000 people for basketball. The current capacity of Verizon Center, home of my beloved Washington Wizards, is 20,308 which includes the recently added standing room only spots. The Dr. Pepper Arena, home of the Texas Legends, seats between 4,000 and 4,500 for basketball so it's considerably smaller.

It's also considerably cheaper. My season tickets in section 109 of Verizon Center cost me $50 per game as a season ticket holder but the list price of those seats is $80 to $100. The price for a ticket where I sat to watch the Legends play the 66ers (first row behind the hockey boards, center court) at Verizon Center would cost between $200 and $300 depending on the night and opponent, meaning Tuesday night games against the Milwaukee Bucks are $200 and Saturday night games against the Miami Heat are $300. My center court seat at Dr. Pepper Arena cost me all of $28, so 10 to 20 percent of the cost of an NBA ticket. The other important cost metric at arenas is the cost of a beer. A 20 oz. Budweiser costs $8 at Verizon Center; a 24 oz. Budweiser costs $7 at Dr. Pepper Arena, so beer is about 75% of the price of beer at VC. Oh how I wish NBDL beer was 10 to 20 percent of the cost of an NBA beer.

The Legends - 66ers playing in the third quarter. No, most of the crowd is not on a beer run.

With this afternoon's game in the books, I have to say the NBDL game experience is a huge step down from the real NBA. It's making me appreciate just how good I have it as a spectator at Verizon Center. The arena is poorly lit, there are bouncy playthings in the ends of the arena (including a very very slow semi-bouncy mechanical bull) and the arena was way less than half full. I can't imagine how some of the NBA veterans playing in this league can stand it. Maybe it's a sign that what I would consider the three true NBA veterans on the Legends team didn't play: Delonte West left the team last week and is apparently not coming back; Rashad McCants was let go by the team for conduct detrimental to the team (according to the PA announcer's side comments before the game); and Luther Head was hurt. On the 66ers side, everyone played, including Chris Quinn ,who played five years in the NBA, and 11 year veteran Rasual Butler, who is hoping to parlay this effort into a new NBA deal. Former Wizard Mike James tried a similar strategy earlier this year and was snapped up by the Mavericks after just one game. Based on his performance this afternoon, I'm not sure Butler's going anywhere.

The game itself was competitive for a while, although the Legends pulled away in the third quarter and ended up winning by 24. The stars of the show were Jared Cunningham, the Mavericks' 2012 first round draft pick who is on assignment to the Legends from the parent team, and Justin Dentmon, who poured in 36 in his 41 minutes. Dentmon spent a little time a couple of years ago with the San Antonio Spurs and the Toronto Raptors. It was clear at times when he was on the floor that Cunningham had more talent than others on the floor, although I'm sure at one time Rasual Butler would have looked just the same against the talent out there this afternoon.

Tomorrow is a day off from hoops on this trip for me. I'm hoping the two games I have left on this vacation are better attended than this afternoon's contest and the experience is better for me. Maybe the afternoon start time was just too much for people to handle. One final note: this is the first game I have ever attended where we were asked to stand and honor "God and America" before the game. I can tell I'm in Texas. :)