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Sydney Kings Home 2019-20 Oh Sydney, what are you doing? You finally get rid of the awkward off-brand script wordmark, and change it to this? Really? Looking past the washed out purple, which I think is just bad photography, where do we start.

The wordmark is not great, the ‘GS’ ligature (if you can even call it that) is clunky, and the white drop shadow on the yellow is really unsettling – flip it to white text with yellow drop shadow and it would be an improvement, but not enough to make me like it.

They’ve changed up the block numbers slightly (at least when comparing this year’s “6” to last year’s), and added a drop shadow. But for reasons unknot they’ve decided the shadow on the numbers needs to go in the opposite direction to the one on the wordmark. Guys, that’s not how shadows work.

Oh well, they can try again for 2020-21 I guess, because this is a big let down.

South East Melbourne Phoenix Home 2019-20 This is the jersey I was most looking forward to seeing, and maybe the one I’m most disappointed with. It’s not that it’s bad, I was just really hoping they’d go for a full electric green home jersey. The green in a lot of shots looks washed out, and like some of the other jerseys this year I can’t work out if it’s meant to be dark charcoal, or it’s meant to be black but the photography is letting it down.

It gets a few little things right, like the absence of any outline on the name and number, and the inaugural season patch in-place of a secondary sponsor is nice – will be interesting to see how far into the season that survives.

The swoopy shape across the lower half of the jersey isn’t really my taste, but people younger than me will probably be loving it. I would have preferred something a little more traditional for an inaugural look, especially for the base home jersey.

Perth Wildcats Home 2019-20 This addresses the two main complaints I had about last year’s jersey – the collar trim has been simplified to a single colour, and the front numbers have been wildly improved. Last year’s numbers were minuscule and in a typeface that didn’t mesh well with the wordmark, this year’s numbers both align with the wordmark and aren’t ridiculously small.

The claw marks on the side add some interest without being over-the-top or comical. A contender for one of the best jerseys in the NBL this year, it’s only really let down by the sponsor integration which could be – a lot – better (read: stop putting sponsors logos in black/white boxes).

New Zealand Breakers Home 2019-20 The Breakers again have possibly the best jersey in the league this year. I still don’t really like the choice of typeface for the numbers, and the white striping on the shoulders and collar isn’t needed, but the continued inclusion of the Maori patterns, along with the black/white/bright-blue combo means this jerseys still look pretty great.

Melbourne United Home 2019-20 A much simpler, more traditional look for Melbourne this season. Gone is the off-centre ‘M’ logo – which looked ridiculous in the absence of a player number, in its place it a fairly basic arched block script and number. Two issues here, the team name in white is unnecessarily outlined in grey, and the number is just an outline. It’s the opposite of the problem the Hawks jersey has.

This year’s Soda Stream sponsorship is better integrated, and improvement over last year’s white block. And the OKC-esque gradient stripes that made uptimes the back of last year’s jersey have been replace with a minimalist dotty/half-tone pattern on the side panels.

Illawarra Hawks Home 2019-20 Based on what I’ve seen on Twitter, people actually like this. Either I’m old, or they’re blind, because this is easily the worst jersey in this year’s bunch. It looks like a “fashion” jersey, not something that should be worn by an actual professional basketball team.

The black wordmark on the black jersey is bad – at least I assume it’s black, these photos all seems a little washed out. The full body double hawks wings graphic is bad, and doesn’t seem to really match the Hawks logo, which makes me too scared to start googling “hawk wings graphics” for fear of finding that someone just lifted these off image search.

Hard pass.

Cairns Taipans Home 2019-20 A fairly minimal evolution from last year, a new brush typeface for the numbers, simpler all-white collar, and an updated snake motif in the side panels. Last year my feeling was that the snake pattern should have been used for the whole side panel, and this year they’ve done exactly that. Although I’d still like it to be a little more subtle – because I’m picky.

I really like the orange/navy combo, but kind of wish they’d gone with navy for the collar instead of white, and featured more navy in the side panels. The taipan head attached to the top of the wordmark still feels superfluous.

Brisbane Bullets Home 2019-20 The most important thing here is that the bizarre script wordmark and number from last year’s jersey is gone. In its place is a relatively standard block font, but again it’s weird that they’ve gone with a seemingly custom wordmark for the jersey that doesn’t match the rest of their brand – the wordmark in their logo would work just fine, I don’t know why they fescue to use it on the jersey.

The stripy side detail is s better than last year’s stars (which have moved to inside the collar), but the collar is a downgrade. They were the only team that had a single colour contrasting colour collar last year, and should have stuck with it – yes, the stripe on the collar matches the wordmark, but its uneven, and that ruins it. The do, however, get points for not adding a white outline to the yellow wordmark, and vice-versa on the number.

Adelaide 36ers Home 2019-20 Much like last season the 36ers have one of the better jerseys, and in many ways it’s better because it’s simpler. The feathery details down the sides are quite nice and include the only touch of red on this year’s jersey. The wordmark hasn’t changed, but now has an outline that frames the wordmark as a whole rather than outlining each letter individually.

Only thing that really bothers me is that the wordmark outline appears to be be light grey/silver, whereas the completely unnecessary outline on the number is the champagne gold colour from their logo.

A solid red collar, or maybe a read outline on the word mark instead of grey might have been nice. There are no sleeve cuffs on this year’s First Ever template, which – at least for me – cheapens the overall look, making them look more like the ‘budget’ Fanatics-made NBA jerseys, rather than something a pro team would be wearing.

Sydney FC Third 2019-20 Somewhat an inverse of the home kit, they get points for trying, but that’s about it. I generally like the “dark kit with bright trim/logos” look, but this one doesn’t do it for me. The charcoal colour is growing on me, and I don’t mind the slightly more visible geometric pattern, but the cross-bar/collar-bone thing is really distracting. For me, the biggest issue is the execution of the single colour Sydney FC badge, I don’t think that’s the right way to ‘invert’ it. With a couple of small tweaks this could be much, much better. 

Sydney FC Away 2019-20 Easily my favourite of the three Sydney FC kits this year. Yeah, it’s a mostly white kit, but the template is slightly better than the home and third kits. The single button collar is the sort of small detail I like, and the slight angle on the cuffs is a nice touch too. Features the same subtle geometric pattern as the home kit, but used on the body rather than the shoulders. Again the inconsistent blues in this photo don’t seem to be as noticeable in real life. Overall, they should have based the home kit on this.

Sydney FC Home 2019-20 The switch to Under Armour means new kits for Sydney this season. The good news is that the blue appears to be less saturated in real life that in this image, and the colour inconsistency between the logo and kit is less pronounced. I like the subtle geometric pattern across the shoulders, but overall the top half of the template – specifically the cross-bar/collar-bone thing – leaves a little to be desired. They do make up some points for making their front-of-shirt Star Casino sponsorship an optional extra, so you can (and should) omit it if you buy one online.