Blazers Pres Confirms Logo, Uniform Changes Are Coming

The Portland Trail Blazers will be changing their logos and uniforms following the 2016-17 season.

Blazers team president Chris McGowan confirmed the changes were coming at the team’s media day earlier this week:

McGowan said there will be a “modernization” of the Blazers’ uniform and logo, but the changes wouldn’t be “drastic.” https://t.co/fcVqAj5BDW
— Joe Freeman (@BlazerFreeman) September 26, 2016

Portland is one of those teams (like the Boston Celtics and New York Rangers) that has kept the same basic look over the entirety of their franchise history only slightly modernizing it every so often, which automatically makes them awesome.

“I think it’s a modernization, I wouldn’t call it drastic,” McGowan told NBA.com. “I think we’re blessed with some of the best uniforms in professional sports, our fans really like our identity, people know it whether you live in Portland or not. So I don’t know if drastic is necessarily what we need to do, but I think you always need to modernize.”

The Trail Blazers’ last overall modernization came in 2003 when they added silver to their colour scheme and sharpened the points on their logo.

The changes coincide with the NBA’s league-wide switch from Adidas to Nike as its uniform manufacturer.

“When you have the opportunity to work with create people like the folks at Nike, you’ve got to take advantage of that opportunity.”, McGowan continued. “We’re having fun with it, but like anything that we do, we’re testing it, we’re talking to fans, we’re using survey information to make sure we’re being guided in the right way so we’re not putting something out there that’s not authentic to who we are or not something that wouldn’t be generally supported by our fans.”

The switch over to Nike will also see teams wear branding other than that of the league’s and team’s on their uniform for the first time as the Nike swoosh will be added to the top right and (optional, team-by-team) sponsor patches to the top left.