A Comprehensive Review Every New NBA 'City' Uniform

The biggest NBA news of the day is that Baron Davis and Laura Dern are dating, but the second biggest news is that Nike Released their designs for every NBA team’s “City” alternate jersey, which are jerseys inspired by cities or some shit. I looked at them and wrote about them, like a normal sports blogger does.

CHICAGO:

It’s the flag, and it’s a nice flag everyone is very fond of. I am worried about players spilling chocolate on their unis, though. That would be very embarrassing, I think, to walk around with a big ol’ chocolate stain on your nice white uniform. High risk, high reward play, here.

PACERS:

It has a checkered flag, like a race car. I like race cars. I like that they go vroom vroom very fast.

CLIPPERS:

Look I don’t know what the fuck is has to do with boats, or why the team is wearing Miami Dolphins colors, but teal is an NBA power color and you have to respect any team that dons it.

BUCKS:

Eggshell tones baby! Perfect for the river-yacht or a chilly, fire-lit library, with a tasteful stripe down the middle to bring it all together. This is the midwestern thinking man’s alternate jersey. Also they say “CREAM CITY” on the bottom, which is where I live, work and play, spiritually.

MAGIC:

If you don’t like these, you need to smoke more weed. One time I was EXTREMELY blitzed off THC drops at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, and I spent like ten minutes in the gift shop, looking at the t-shirts they were selling. I thought the drawing was really nice and for a hot second I thought, damn I need one of these motherfuckers REAL bad but then my good brain, not my stoned brain, kicked in and way like “Hey Corbin, man, you’re probably too stoned to make this purchase, this shirt isn’t that nice dude.” Anyway, if I was still using, and I encountered this jersey in that state, I would HAVE to buy the Bismack Biyombo manifestation of this jersey, just spend whatever obscene amounts of money was requested of me, and regret the purchase in a very true and real way while also savoring my stoned wisdom in that time. This jersey rules.

SPURS:

I get that, as a left leaning-dude, I’m expected to hate black and white Spurs-branded digi-camo. But by making the camo black and white, it goes BEYOND a tribute-to-the-troops and turns a bunch of dudes who plays a game for a living into members of a private mercenary gang that kills its enemies with hoops. Watching capital inadvertently debase the world spanning military colossus that keeps it in power is kinda funny, I think it’s good.

SIXERS:

EXTRAORDINARILY classy font! Finally, the play of Joel Embiid is being recognized for what it is: a luxury product, grander than any wine, any gold topped chocolate bon bon, any gentle scented oil, rubbed into your back by the world’s strongest and most skilled masseuse.

ROCKETS:

At first glance, it’s maybe a little weird that the Rockets have Chinese writing on a jersey that is meant to celebrate the city of Houston, a city where most people speak English. But, clearly, this is the harbinger of the future for the franchise, which is going to move to Beijing as soon as possible. What’s my source? THAT’s my source buddy! BEIJING ROCKETS 2018-19, DON’T TRY TO HIDE FROM IT!

UTAH:

Evokes the 70s, cocaine. Maravich belongs in this jersey.

KINGS:

The Basketball is a Lion King. He will stand above all other balls and roar, and the other balls will bow at his might until, one day, he is killed by another basketball, his brother who is also a basketball. His son, a basketball as well, will get revenge and take his place on the mountain, though.

BROOKLYN:

It’s a Nets Jersey. It’s black and white and it looks nice. Not everything needs to shatter molds.

MIAMI:

I wanna make a joke, but what, I’m made of stone?

KNICKS:

I like firefighters and no one can say otherwise.

CELTICS:

You guys aren’t gonna believe this, but the Celtics have a boring looking alternate jersey to compliment their boring looking regular jersey. Features grey. More on that later. We are living in the wildest possible times.

LAKERS:

Kobe Bryant designed these. They’re supposed to look like snakes, because Kobe branded himself as a snake. Kobe spending his retirement trying a bunch of sports-adjacent shit he’s not good at and getting deferrence because he is Kobe Bryant, The Player Who Scored A Lot, is maybe the most embarrassing shit I’ve ever seen a professional athlete do. It would be less embarrassing if he was posting videos where people pissed in his mouth or making sly pro-Trump allusions to reporters or taking 125th place in Scrabble tournaments.

CAVS:

It is, I think, truly stunning how terrible these things are. They are, first, off, grey. You know, grey? The color of cloudy days and paved over fields? The color that only looks good on dads, while they swing hammers or pick up their children, or whatever? And then, the only color that REALLY compliments grey, which is yellow. You know. Like a paved road, that thing everyone thinks has a cool color? I mean who can blame Nike, I suppose, when LeBron James, the world’s most famous athlete, is the human being who is your most prominent non-Jordan pitchman, you gotta put him in the ugliest shit imaginable

OKC:

Honestly, It’s impressive how awful these are, soup-to-nuts. No one who made this had even one good idea they put into the final product. Every OKC jersey is bad, of course, on account of the team’s very existence being born from the poison seed of theft from Seattle, but… Gradients!? GRADIENTS!? A grey-to-grey-gradient? Why, on God’s green earth, is Nike fucking so hard with Grey, a color, not even a color, a SHADE, that has inspired exactly no people, ever? They like grey so much that they put TWO DIFFERENT KINDS of grey in this piece of garbage, and subtly mixed the two greys so that there would be nearly infinite manifestations of grey betweens the main greys. This jersey is seeking the limits of grey itself, the deepest grey, the grey at the edge of our understanding of grey.

WASHINGTON:

All the chocolate staining potential of the Chicago jersey, none of the evocative shit. These are maybe, low key, the worst one.

ATLANTA:

This evokes bees, not Hawks. Would someone please put feather texturing on these jerseys, like the world has been demanding all these years.

DETROIT:

These say “Motor City” but do not feature any pictures of cars, which I love because, like I said earlier, they are fast and they make loud noises. The move here was an updated version of the mid 90’s Grant-Hill vroom vroom firehorse, but Nike isn’t listening to good sense!

WOLVES:

Look, I’ve talked a lot of shit on Grey, which is Nike’s favorite color right now I guess, but I can accept it here. Minny winters are insanely grey, wolves are grey, this all makes thematic sense. But also: good god grey is ugly. Don’t wear grey!

MAVERICKS:

These are bad but they’re like so bad that I think they almost fly around the moon and become good again? They are a bad uniform that lives somewhere out of time, a look that has never been cool in any era, but in that fact I think they gain a kind of integrity. There’s a possibility that, someday, in 2067 or some shit, these will have been regarded at an innovative step forward in jersey aesthetics, even if we think they’re hideous now. Cop them and freeze dry to sell in the future.

WARRIORS:

That shade of yellow is hideous but the logo is cool? “The Bay” is some real San Francisco bullshit though, one of those subtle org-wide attempts to separate the team from Oakland before they strip the city of the team and move them to rich-ass tech boi SF in a few years.

MEMPHIS:

Honestly I feel weird writing snarky, mildly absurdist jokes about a jersey that is based on signs from a famous workers rights struggle. While I guess I respect Grizzlies celebrating a monumental protest with their unis, the fact that they were designed and manufactured by Nike, a company with a workers rights record that is spotty at best, goes a long way to defanging the allusion. Capitalism: it’s everywhere and it’s amoral!

SUNS:

EXTREMELY PURPLE. Purple is my favorite color and I honestly admire how purple these are, while also wondering… how purple is too purple?

PELICANS:

These are also Purple.

BLAZERS:

Every other Portland fan hates these things, which makes sense because they live in the world capital of streetwear snobbery. I think they’re fine. The plaid is totally unnecessary. If I was making these bad boys, I think I would stick a fat-ass salmon on there, personally. I also think that the mascot should be replaced with a salmon.

HORNETS:

I don’t even know, man. If it were up to me, I would make them play in a white jersey with a fat-ass picture of Michael Jordan’s smiling face on the front, and anything else will just seem incomplete to me.

RAPTORS:

Finally a uniform that tells sports fans: “Hey: my face is up here. I know my body is chugging away down here, but the soul is in the face, and that’s where a person’s TRUE MEANING can be found. Geeze louise.”

NUGGETS:

Nice shade of blue. Fun stripes. Otherwise: whatever.

Okay I did it, this is every uniform. Back to tracking down every last piece of information I can collect and Baron + Laura. Where do they like to go to dinner, you think?