The royal jerseys weren't visually unpleasing, but they didn't really stand out either (other than that a living legend was wearing one). In fact, the royal made the uni's look kinda corny. I don't know why, but they just had no character. And I know the lone blue isn't THAT much of a departure from the royal, but that little bit actually goes a long way to differentiate them from the land of boring looking jerseys. After Jordan left, the lone blue slowly worked its way back into the mix, finally coming back for good in the 02-03 season.


And so things went for the next couple years. We wore white at home, blue on the road. Then came 2006... and almost out of nowhere, these things showed up.

a little suspect.

In the 06-07 season, this alternate road jersey showed up to everyone's surpise since it was pretty much completely different than what we were accustomed to. As an avid fan, I caught wind that the Wiz were going to be releasing an alternate road/home jersey (after using retro Bullet throwbacks for the past couple years as their alternate jersey). It was exciting. Finally, a new look jersey but the Wizards name on it. Most people (including me) expected a regular road jersey but in black with the blue sides and trim. It fit the color scheme, it was different, and they even went through the trouble of offering a replica jersey with this scheme:

sorry for the horrendous quality, but pictures of this colorway don't hardly exist no more.

But nope, we got the gold ones instead. I remember when I first saw these, I absolutely hated them (along with a WHOLE LOT of other people). Now that its been an entire season of seeing them in action, I'll admit, I've actually grown to like them. I know they're a little weird looking, and pretty much eryone in the league thinks they're ugly, but at least when you see them, you know what team it is. It's like yellow and purple, black and red, and green and white. When you see those colors on tv, you automatically know which team is playing. Anyways, i still like the blue uniform too, and i'm glad they're using both instead of just sticking wit one.

But that brings me to the point of even starting this post. Somewhere along the way, the Wizards brass must have realized during the season that our colors were black, blue, and BRONZE (and not the gold that was on our jerseys). So this year, they changed that. So now we had to incorporate gold into our jerseys. Simple right? Replace whatever was bronze with gold. Doesn't seem too hard.

Oh but it is. It really is. Whoever design the Wiz uniforms really needs to rethink about how good they are at their job. Here's a visual progression of the white home jersey:

L-R: '02-'07 Jerseys, Oct-Nov '07 Jersey, Nov '07 - Current Jersey

From left to right, we start with the classic Wiz home jersey from last year and years past. It was blue with a bronze outline, perfectly using our colors while maintaing a clean look. It worked. Again, it wasn't the most stunning look ever, but it worked.

So the genius Wiz jersey designers decided that since we're changing the bronze to gold on the jersey, we might as well try a new look. Instead of the big fat names on the back, we removed the outline, sized them down, and were left with an all blue nameplate. (as seen in the middle pics above). Then on Nov. 17, after the Minnesota game (when they wore the redesigned blue jerseys) they ended up reverting back to the old style home jersey with the fat outlined letters for whatever reason (most likely to keep in line with the away jerseys), the only change being changing the bronze outline to gold.

Ok I can live with that.

Now the away blue jerseys on the other hand...

The redesign to start off the year had the names smaller, strictly in gold (to match our new colorway) like the white jerseys did with the blue names. Looking back, its really not a bad look, sure it was pretty hard to read the names, but then again, you should know which player is which by their jersey number anywas. So something must have happened in the early part of November that got the Wizards thinking that the names on the jerseys just weren't cutting it. So they changed it too. But instead of white with a gold outline (to keep, ironically in uniform with past jerseys like they did with the home white), they decided to use gold text with a white outline. The result? a clunky looking back of the jersey whose upperhalf looks overbearing compared with the rest of the jersey. It's almost as hard to read their names on the back of their jerseys now because the way the gold text is outlined in white is not exactly the best contrasting combination in the world. So to sum up, it looks off-balance and is difficult to read. Great revision.

There was no explanation for the change, but then again, I don't know many people really noticed it. Why did they change it? Did they really need to? Who's decision was it? Did the non-outlined names look too plain? Were they that hard to read? Did the colors just blend so well together that it was hard to even notice the names on the jersey? Which colorway caused the change, white, blue, or both? Maybe it was a little bit of everything. Needless to say, we went from decent (last year), to clean (beginning of this year), to blah (the rest of this year.) Keep in mind, I'm only talking about the blue jerseys, as the white and the gold have been virtually unchanged.

I've always liked the Wiz uniforms (maybe biased, maybe not) , and I really hope this isn't their way of phasing out the blue in favor of only gold.

If you're one of the few trying to get your hands on the redesigned blue jersey (with the clunky letters) though, and you're not lucky enough to live near the Verizon Center, the only version you can get is a mish-mash of a jersey instead of what they're really wearing. On NBA.com, WashingtonWizards.com, and Eastbay.com, they all have the new version with gold trim, but with the white name and number. Hmm.

At Modell's in the VC, they have the redesigned jersey from the beginning of the year with the smaller names (all blue for home, all gold for away).

Please no one want the new blue jersey.

Labels: basketball, nba, wizards

Posted by eva on 1.28.2008 at 12:10 PM | Permalink