A look at teal uniforms

Here are four teal uniforms worthy of discussion despite not reaching great heights of attractiveness.

Charlotte Hornets, 1996-2002 road

This is messy. The colour, waistband striping and jersey-only pinstripes make the uniform loud, but the side striping does the real damage by overwhelming everything else.  The absence of the white trim their previous roads had is a drawback – it softened the uniform.

Detroit Pistons, 1995-2001 road

This is remarkable for being the teal showpiece of the flaming horse era, an unattractive but interesting period in Pistons’ history. The colour combo makes it hard for this to succeed – one trim colour would have been plenty. The side panels wrapping around the shorts hem is an uninspired design, too. But the worst part is the jersey logo. Both the lettering, which is tough to read, and the horse design look cheap. Those flames are pretty bad. The number font is goofy, which hurts because a more traditional approach would’ve offset some of the wackiness. 

New Orleans Hornets, 2002-05 road

This is an example of how a teal uniform can be tame, but it’s also still significantly better than what the Hornets/Pelicans have worn since 2008. It’s simple, but it doesn’t have the commitment to simplicity that could’ve elevated it from standard to great. The outline on the numbers and letters is a tinge messy, the shorts logos look like they were thrown on, and there’s one too many ‘H’ logos. 

Vancouver Grizzlies, 1995-2000 road

This theoretically could be considered similar to the Raptors’ inaugural road uniform, in that it’s loud and belongs to a 1995 Canadian expansion team. But they’re really very different, as this is far inferior to Toronto’s first roads. The teal is unattractive because it clashes with the earthy colours on the rest of the uniform. The trim pattern is interesting but too busy to be prominently displayed on this uni, particularly given the teal. The word mark is okay, but being 2D would’ve made it better. The size of the bear on the shorts is excessive, which fits the theme of the uniform but doesn’t look good.

Trail Blazers following unfortunate court trend

The Portland Trail Blazers announced last month they’ll have a new court design next season determined by a fan vote. The winning design won’t be revealed until October but, judging by the three finalists, it will be flawed.

The finalists for the Blazers' court design contest

There is great control over the look of the playing surface in the NBA, with colour, pattern, and graphics possibilities that don’t exist in other sports. With these possibilities comes great variance in the look of the playing surface. NBA arenas don’t offer glimpses of a city skyline or mountain range in the background and they generally have the same basic look, so the court is largely relied upon to provide differentiation.

Getting the floor right is both possible and worthwhile.

But there are significant issues with current designs around the NBA. The two-toned wood look is popular – and featured in the Blazers’ finalist designs – but it creates a clash. Even if one of the tones is a good choice, it’s undone by the inferior tone. It also looks like it exists just for the sake of difference. Even relegating the second tone to the out-of-bounds area doesn’t work.

Solid keys are another issue represented in Portland’s finalist designs. Keys with strips of contrasting colour on the edges have been forsaken by some teams for the solid option. The coloured sides soften the key and add interest. Although the solid colour keys are generally superior to the solid plain keys, both are too stark.

Having no solid chunks of colour, not even out of bounds, doesn’t look right, as the Houston Rockets’ floor shows. Even if the two-tone situation and Houston’s logo and word mark were improved upon, going without any colour chunks is pushing it on the plainness front.

There’s also problems at centre court, with teams either choosing a secondary logo when the primary would be superior, or opting for a word mark when a logo would be better.

The baseline word marks can have a significant influence on the success or failure of a floor. The font can be random, entirely separate from the team’s other word marks, and still enhance the court. The Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks provide two examples where the font doesn’t match what’s on their jerseys but does spruce up their home court.