Cleveland Cavaliers City Edition 2021-22 Give this a wordmark on the chest instead of a full logo and its a winner. The logo is just too detailed, but if it was just the arched ‘Cavaliers’ on it’s own and it would work well. Very pleased it is only wine and gold, with no trace of black in sight.
Chicago Bulls City Edition 2021-22 I’ve always liked this Chicago script, and think it should feature more often on Bulls jerseys. Maybe wouldn’t have minded some subtle black pinstripes on the red would have been nice. I know the weirdly low offset number is throwback, but it’s an unnecessary one, lift it up and these are much better.
Charlotte Hornets City Edition 2021-22 It’ll sell well because of LaMelo, and that should be the only reason. The gradient on the jersey (not the shorts, they should be a solid colour) could almost be forgiven if not for the horrendous inclusion of the honeycomb pattern. I know it’ll be popular in corners of the internet, but those folk are wrong, sorry.
Brooklyn Nets City Edition 2021-22 Quite good all around. I much prefer this to the tie-dye variation from last season, the side detailing is nice, but I would have liked to have seen bigger stars more reminiscent of the jerseys its inspired by.
Boston Celtics City Edition 2021-22 The Celtics are one of those teams that probably just shouldn’t have “other” jerseys, but this is relatively inoffensive, and a good nod to one of their originals. The only bit I don’t really like is the unnecessary use of grey side panels on the shorts. And while I know sponsors patches aren’t great, I do like that Vista Print have allowed a variety of flexibility in how they appear on each of the Celtics jerseys this season.
Atlanta Hawks City Edition 2021-22 Not the design I would have chosen to riff off of, I’d have gone with one of the 70s/80s designs (probably the one that goes with the featured wordmark). Not sure about Atlanta in full yellow, but at least they stayed away from the temptation of a gradient.
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.