The days of player preference or superstition playing a role in uniform choices appear to be over in the National Basketball Association.
This past week, courtesy a fantastic article in the Boston Herald, we learned the league and Nike are both calling the shots when it comes to which of the four-to-five uniforms, as well as what colour tights a team wears from game-to-game.
“The league gives us a master schedule,” said Celtics travel and equipment coordinator John Connor. “We put it on the wall and we just give out what’s on the wall. We get the schedule and what we’re supposed to wear from the league, and it’s for the whole year.
“It used to be Paul Pierce saying, ‘Hey, let’s wear the green/black ones.’ Not anymore. The players can’t control it.”
The Herald also pointed out that Nike directly “scripts” the tight colours a team must wear with the uniform the NBA has picked out around 50 percent of the games.
Over this past offseason the NBA adopted a new uniform system with the switch of providers from Adidas to Nike; the new system eliminated the use of home and road uniforms instead employing four different choices for each team; the result of this new plan has been an assortment of different uniform matchups giving hometown crowds a little more variety.
According to Uniwatch, who has been tracking the types of matchups throughout the season, home team in white vs road team in colour is still the most common combo hovering around the 50% mark; the reverse of this with the home team in colours and road in white is worn second most at 30; colour vs colour making up the rest.
Featured photo © Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
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