Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports
You won’t mistake them for European soccer jerseys, but the basketball uniforms NBA players will wear in Feb. 14’s All-Star Game will be adorned with advertising. Specifically, a 3.25-by-1.6-inch Kia logo will be plastered in the upper left corner of everybody’s jersey.
It’s a first among the nation’s four biggest professional sports organizations: the NBA, the NFL, the NHL and Major League Baseball. The logo-less look has long been a prime example of “American exceptionalism,” says sports uniforms expert Paul Lukas, whose Uni-Watch.com website has established him as the articulator of athletics aesthetics.
But now, what once was the exception is considered “inevitable,” according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
How inevitable? Consider that Lukas — who appeared at HotelRED in December as part of the Morning Sports Report quarterly breakfast series presented by the Madison Area Sports Commission and ESPN Madison — hardly even mentioned the development during an entertaining question-and-answer session about the business of uniforms. When college football bowl games are named after tax-preparation software programs, ads on professional basketball players’ jerseys shouldn’t shock anybody.
Instead, the discussion with Lukas covered uniforms worn by the Wisconsin Badgers football team (“That motion W is starting to look dated”) and the UW men’s basketball team’s regrettable “cummerbund” look for last year’s NCAA tournament (“You almost hoped you’d lose in the second round, didn’t you?”), as well as the Milwaukee Brewers (“way too generic”) and the Green Bay Packers (“I would never change that look”).
As of early this week, Lukas had yet to weigh in on the throwback unis the Wisconsin men’s basketball team is wearing throughout February in honor of Black History Month and former Badgers coach Bill Cofield — the first African American head coach of a major sport in the Big Ten. The classy all-red look from Adidas echoes UW uniforms from the 1976 season (Cofield’s first at the helm), with “Wisconsin” in block letters across the jersey’s front and Bucky on the shorts.
The Badgers debuted the uniforms last week at the Kohl Center, when they beat Ohio State to extend their winning streak to a season-high five games. Plans originally called for UW to don the uniforms for only one game, but interim head coach Greg Gard said players asked to wear them for the entire month.
All of which goes to show that uniforms really can mean something. Must we confuse their message by displaying an ad?
