Los Angeles Lakers wear purple for home game

This really is a whole new world when it comes to uniforms in the NBA and nobody is experiencing the changes like the Los Angeles Lakers are. Of all teams in the league, you’d expect the Lakers to be one of the more conservative teams when it comes to their uniforms. After all, when you think of the Lakers then you’re likely to have memories of them crushing the dreams of your favorite NBA team while wearing those “Iconic” gold jerseys for home games.

However, things have changed since Nike took over the uniform program in the NBA. There are no more “home” and “away” jerseys, and they’ve been replaced by “Association” white uniforms and “Icon” color jerseys with “Statement” uniforms serving as the primary alternate and the home team gets to choose which uniform to wear for the game. However, Nike got weird with the Lakers and decided that their Association uniform would be their “Sunday” whites, and their traditional purple road jerseys are actually classified as an alternate jersey.

Celtics wearing green at home while the Lakers are wearing gold on the road. Strange!

As a result, the Lakers have gotten weird with their uniform choices as of late. Yes, they’ve mostly stuck with wearing their traditional gold uniforms at home but they’ve also been wearing them on the road as well and they’ve also been wearing their “Sunday” white uniforms for road games and have even broken out their “Classic” Minneapolis Lakers throwbacks before we even got a chance to see them wear their purple jerseys for any game this season.

This game took place in Portland on a Thursday. The Lakers wore their “Sunday” whites.

The Lakers finally broke out their purple uniforms for a “road” game — the scare quotes are there because the road game was against their cross-arena neighbors in the form of the LA Clippers. However, the Lakers apparently enjoyed wearing the purple jerseys in Staples Center so much that they continued wearing them for another game at the arena — a home tilt against the Golden State Warriors.

Lakers in purple at home. We’ve seen it all now.

The Los Angeles Lakers have been playing basketball in Los Angeles since 1960, and this may have been the very first time that the team wore purple for a home game. I’m not making that statement with a lot of confidence, but I really can’t remember the last time that the team wore their “road” jerseys for a home game at their home arena. It’s just a jarring thing to witness, but it’s also fascinating at the same time.

When I implored the NBA to make color-on-color matchups the norm rather than the exception, I did not think that this would result in Nike and the NBA basically opening the floodgates and, as a result, bringing up a possibility where the Lakers would decide that wearing purple at home was cool now. But it’s happened, and now clearly anything is possible in this new NBA uniform world if this is going on.

What do you all think of this? Are you cool with seeing the NBA’s blueblood franchise switching things up in such a manner? Let us know what you think!