Tweaking the Classics - NBA EDITION
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:28PM A while back, an emailer - Zack - sent me a request with a really interesting idea:
Just an idea since you do a lot of NBA rebrandings I would be interested to see what you would do with the Knicks, Lakers or Bulls.
To me, those three organizations are three of the top four franchises in the NBA as far as history and uniforms (the Celtics being the unnamed fourth).
Taking a crack at their uniforms - while certainly not unheard of, all three have gone through some pretty dramatic changes since the mid-80s - would be a challenge between balancing what makes their uniforms great with new ideas that can improve their image.
Also, with such perfect logos and historic courts, the only changes needed to these teams would be to their uniforms (although, as you'll see, I did alter the Knicks' logos a smidgen)
So here we go:
Bulls
Not much of a change here to the Home or Road versions. Jordan and company made these already great unis classics, so, in my humble opinion, I left them generally unchanged.
Unfortunately for these concept templates, you don't see the backs of the jerseys. If you could, you would see that the names on the backs would be sans-outline and would be white on both Road versions, because this looks way better than this.
The Bulls' black Road alternate has a long storied history. In the 1995-96 season the Bulls broke out these black alternates 10 times in route to their historic 72 win season. Good karma right? No.
The Bulls went 5-5 in their pinstripe duds (duds being the key word) and 67-5 in white and red. Ever since, the Bulls have tried to keep and update their black alternates but never quite got them right.
The biggest problem was the striping. Either the Bulls didn't have the striping (including the diamond on the shorts) or the striping was different from the Home and Road. Even today's black alternate is still wrong - the striping colors go red-black-white-black-red when they should go red-white-black-white-red (because the uniform color should be the middle stripe color).
Fixing the striping and then taking inspiration from the mid-80s Road jersey, I give you my fixed black Road alternate.
Knicks
As I said at the top of the show, I did have to make some small alterations to the Knicks' logos. All I did, as you can see, is take the black out and replace it with blue (this should give you a hint about what I did with their uniforms).
As far as the Knicks uniforms go, I basically took everything good from the modern set and combined it with the good from the Ewing Years set.
From the Ewing era, I kept the stripe pattern, collar and sleeve pattern and the fonts.
From the modern era, I kept the continuous side stripe and the logos.
Combine all that, and Voilà: I give you the New Look Knicks.
Lakers
Once again, I present to you an amalgamation of old and new.
I should be a poet.
While the Lakers look great in their current set, they used to look great in their old set too. And while I've gone back mostly to the old set, I didn't go all the way back (no one wants to see this).
I have kept the current logos, fonts (especially the lack of the drop shadow) and have made all the numbers the opposite color scheme as the 'Lakers' script this is both old and new). And finally, the striping is all from the Magic Johnson to early Kobe era.
Those are my ideas to perfect perfection. Obviously, all three teams currently look great, but who says you fix what ain't broke.
Once again, I hope you like this design. If you really like my designs, remember that I just opened up my own shop where you can purchase any of my original designs in t-shirt form. If you have any merchandize or design requests, please drop me an email.
Until then - as always - leave it in the comments.
Tim E. O'Brien
Tim E. O'Brien
Update #2:
Dan, based on your request in the comments, here is an Orange alt:
Bulls, Chicago, Knicks, Lakers, Logo Design, Los Angeles, NBA, New York, Uniform Cencepts in Uniform Concepts