The National Basketball Association and Nike today unveiled the sixteen new alternate “Earned” uniforms that’ll be worn between Christmas and the end of the season by teams that qualified for the playoffs last season. The idea is that the teams “earned” the honour of getting an additional (fifth!) uniform option for finishing in the top 53% of their respective conference.
All of the designs are re-colours of existing team jerseys, mostly they’re from the new “City” set unveiled last month, but others are based on the “Statement” uniforms first introduced before last year’s 2017-18 season.
Here are all of the new “Earned” uniforms in the NBA for the 2018-19 season:
The Celtics are wearing a green version of their City Edition uniform, uniform features a gold wordmark and numbers, white trim around the collar and sleeves, and Red Auerbach’s signature at the jock tag.
Cleveland’s “Earned” uniform is a re-coloured City uniform, now in white and blue – in striking contrast to the royal blue and orange of their City set. This uniform is to pay tribute to the Great Lakes, the City of Cleveland is on the shore of Lake Erie, the smallest of the five Great Lakes.
Golden State has a new yellow and grey version of their “The Town” statement uniforms, this set pays tribute to their home city of Oakland.
The Rockets “Earned” edition uniform would work great as one of their usual uniforms, rather than a one-season special, Houston’s design is a red version of their usual black “statement” uniforms.
Another improvement over their usual set is the Indiana Pacers earned uniform, a recolour of their grey City uniforms. The design is a modernized take on the uniforms worn by the team originally in the early-to-mid 1990s.
The Heat are going pink with their Earned uniform, a recoloured version of their black “VICE” City uniforms from this season (and their white City uniform from last season)
Milwaukee takes the unusual template used for their MECCA court “City” uniform and tones down the colours to give us a unique and yet still eye-pleasing design. The “barberpole” stripes are a nod to the sides of the uniform worn by the Bucks in their original seasons.
Prince gets his second NBA jersey in just a few weeks as the Minnesota Timberwolves unveil a white version of the popular Purple Rain “City” uniform.
Yes, please! The Pelicans have found their look here I think! The city’s nickname “NOLA” (New Orleans, LA) across the front on three horizontal stripes in the Pelicans actual colour palate, it’s a recolour of their Mardi Gras “City” edition uniforms.
Imagine a white version of the Thunder’s new City Edition uniform, wearing that full-time alongside the sky blue beautys. Sounds great, right. Unfortunately the Thunder opted to go with their fairly boring Statement edition uniform, here in orange with an “OKC” in navy blue.
A white version of the Sixers grey, Rocky Balboa-inspired City edition uniforms. Yep.
Portland’s new black City Edition uniform recoloured in red, retainins the “RipCity” wordmark across the front.
A recolour of their existing, forgettable, camouflague “City” Edition uniform.
An improvement over their black-and-gold OVO-Drake “City” uniforms while retaining the same design, a chevron pointing north as usually seen on the sides of their standard set now recoloured red and white to match the Canadian flag. Makes a little more sense to have a “North” jersey honouring the entire country in red-and-white, right?
A green version of their blue statement uniforms. The Utah Jazz wore green as their primary road uniform colour during their first few seasons in Salt Lake City after moving north from New Orleans.
Replacing black with red, the Wizards Earned uniform brightens up the DC Nights “City” uniform unveiled earlier this season. The pattern on the side of the jersey is meant to resemble the white marble seen throughout the buildings in the U.S. capital, the shape of that side striping also based on the Washington Monument.
The Milwaukee Bucks will be the first to wear the new uniform on the court, they’ll do so at noon ET on Christmas Day against the New York Knicks; in total we’ll see seven of the sixteen “Earned” uniforms début on December 25th including two games, Boston vs Philadelphia and Utah vs Portland, in which both teams will be wearing the new looks.
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