In case you haven’t heard, Nike is now the official uniform provider for the NBA. This means every team is getting new jerseys. Gone are the days of “Home” and “Away”, for we are now in the time of “Association” (white) and “Icon” (team color). The home team will pick which jersey they want to play in, and the road team will respond with a contrasting jersey choice. Eight teams (the Bucks included) are also getting “Classic” throwback jerseys, though those have not been revealed yet.
The jerseys are made of recyclable material, including about 20 plastic bottles per jersey. Nike claims their design will make the jerseys more breathable, and also make them stick to players’ bodies less. Most notable, though, is the introduction of sponsored advertisement patches on team jerseys, like you might see in soccer. The Bucks have partnered with Harley Davidson for their uniform patches, and the patches can be seen in the above picture on the top right corner of each jersey.
Some Bucks fans on Twitter (see the responses to that tweet) have had mixed reactions to the new jersey patches. The general consensus seems to be that Harley-Davidson is a great, local partner for the uniforms, but that the colors do not fit in well. One possible solution offered up was to keep the logo as-is, but make it black and white instead. I understand where these people are coming from, but the fact of the matter is that if you squint at the Harley-Davidson logo, it kind of looks like a basketball.
Once you accept that the Harley-Davidson logo kind of looks like a basketball (especially in the zoomed-out context of watching a game on TV), you can see that these jerseys are clear winners. Besides the logo addition and the material, the jerseys are pretty close to last year’s Bucks jerseys, which I thought also looked great. If you want to take a walk through memory lane (comprised solely of Bucks jerseys), the Bucks have put together a nice slideshow of their jersey history you can check out.
At the end of the day, these Bucks jerseys aren’t too much of a change from last year. The only difference is the Harley-Davidson logo, which not only looks kind of like a basketball if you squint (I will die on this hill), but also seems like it belongs on a sports jersey anyways. While the new Nike jerseys are not revolutionary, they sure have gotten me excited for this upcoming Bucks season.