What appears to be the entire new set of Sacramento Kings logos for the 2016-17 season have been “leaked” early, thanks to a European trademark filing by the National Basketball Association. This follows our report from February stating new logos were coming for the Kings as well as two other NBA teams.
The logos show a modern take on the logo the Kings took with them to Sacramento from Kansas City in 1985, the logo was originally designed for the Cincinnati Royals in 1971 and moved with the team across the country through Kansas City and Omaha before settling in California in the mid-1980s. Sacramento used the logo until 1993 when they adopted the logo they’d been using through this past season.
Before you begin the panic, the logos are shown here in black and white as most trademark filings are. We do not know the actual colour scheme yet.
Let’s compare the new logo with some of the previous versions:
The obvious changes are to the font, much more modern, the city name now also brought into the crown while the team name sits on a new strip between the crown and ball. The mountain peaks are largely the same now with thicker lines adding the depth between them. The ball adds an additional seam. I feel it’s important to state once again that we don’t have the colour information yet for this new set, trademark filings are almost always done so in black and white.
In addition to the above variations of the new/retro mark, the club also looks to be going with a royal lion theme for their alternate marks, seen below wearing the crown from the primary mark and dribbling the same basketball.
The logos were all filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office with a registration date of April 22, 2016. They are listed as being registered by NBA Properties, Inc. located in New York.
New logos in the NBA are typically unveiled in May and June, no word yet on when the Kings will make these official. Obviously we’ll be all over that story when it happens. We’re also expecting new logos from the Detroit Pistons and Utah Jazz this summer, just a prediction here but I think it’s safe to say it’ll be three modern-retro logos.
UPDATE (Apr 25/16):
Regular contributor to the site Conrad Burry has learned from his reliable sources that the Sacramento Kings colour scheme will be purple, silver, and white. Note, no black is listed there. We can’t confirm this ourselves but it’s worth noting that Mr. Burry is never wrong when it comes to the NBA.
With that new information Conrad whipped up these potential versions of the new Kings set in colour, again this is just speculative colour placement based on what we learned earlier today.
Not bad.
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Big hat tip to Dennis Chung (@DenChung) for the heads up on this story. Thanks Dennis!