Raptors Announce Jersey Ad, Plus Possible Uni Changes Leak

Busy morning for the Toronto Raptors today, the team announced they would be adding an advertisement to the front of their uniform, minutes later in an unrelated incident a possible leak of a small uniform change for the team surfaced.

We’ll start with the jersey patch as we know that’s definitely happening.

The Raptors will be sporting a patch for Sun Life Financial on the upper left corner of their on-court jerseys. Sun Life is a Toronto-based life insurance and investment company who had previously had a jersey patch on the sleeve of Team Canada’s jerseys during the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

This patch will appear on the Raptors home, road, alternate, and “YOLOVO6ix!” jerseys.

As for the “leak”, an image was released showing the apparent cover of the Canadian edition of the NBA 2K18 video game with Raptors’ All-Star DeMar DeRozan. The image featured a PhotoShopped picture of DeRozan from the 2015-16 season with some of the jersey designs changed.

Take a look at the photo from the video game cover on the left and the original photo on the right, we’ve added arrows to point out what’s different (click image for closer look):

Raptors jersey edits for NBA 2K18 cover (click for larger image)

First the All-Star Game patch from the photo on the right is gone, replaced with a Nike swoosh, note there is no SunLife patch on the jersey shown on the game cover. The big change is to the side panels, going from black with silver chevrons to being completely erased with only the chevrons remaining in black.

Not a terrible change if true.

The Raptors have said their 2017-18 uniforms will not be unveiled until the fall, which could give us a (disappointingly late) idea of when the full NBA Nike rollout could take place.