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Hollinger’s Showcase notebook: Suns’ $4 billion sale renews NBA expansion buzz

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LAS VEGAS — Usually the G League Winter Showcase marks a beginning point for a big chunk of the NBA’s trade conversations. Even in our networked/texting/Zooming world, face time matters. Nearly every exec in the league spends at least a day here hobnobbing.

Front office members and staffers see each other at the two courts where the event is held, and perhaps at the bar at the end of a long day, too, since virtually everyone is in the same hotel. Relaxed without the prying eyes of fans around, they trade bits of information and crop up conversations. Next thing you know, there’s a three-team, eight-player deal on the table. It still takes the urgency of the trade deadline in February to actually get these conversations to the finish line, but this week is often the catalyst.

This year has felt … different. The overarching theme is that things seemed quieter than usual.

“Quiet” isn’t the same thing as “dead,” of course, and flickers of trade market life could be detected if one looked closely enough. Teams spent the week kicking the tires on Chicago’s situation. Phoenix’s exiled Jae Crowder remains a target for several contenders. Oh, and have you heard Atlanta’s John Collins is available?

Nonetheless, the cold math remains: It’s tough to have buyers without any sellers, and there just aren’t many sellers right now. That may change as we get closer to the trade deadline and more teams see their preseason hopes collide with the realities of their rosters. Right now, however, the potentially interesting sellers are either straddling .500 or, in a few cases, clinging resolutely to the delusion that they can get there. Instead of actual trade talks, we’re left speculating about guys who might, maybe, at some point, want to be traded. Fun times.

Instead, it was a different transaction that got everyone’s attention this week.

Four billion dollars? Now that got people talking. That was the valuation Mat Ishbia agreed to this week in purchasing a controlling stake of the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

It’s one thing when the LA Clippers go for billions, but Phoenix? A growing but transplant-heavy market, with a tired arena and lots of pro and college sports competition? That’s news. In October, Forbes rated the Suns the 13th-most valuable NBA property, at a value of $2.7 billion. Ishbia went much higher than that.

The sale of the Suns and Mercury should have a big impact on NBA business in two areas. First of all, it could precipitate moves in other markets. The working presumption by many insiders is that we would see a raft of sales after the new collective bargaining agreement and next TV deal are finalized, since secure labor peace and a potential TV money bonanza would likely increase valuations. (As would expansion fees that might happen concurrently, but more on that below.)

However, economists who believe in efficient market theory would tell you this knowledge should already be baked into bidders’ valuations. The Suns’ sale seems to be a perfect example. At first glance, it seems like a wild overvaluation, but it makes a lot more sense if one is looking at the post-2026 market.

So the question becomes: What other owners might realize that they don’t need to wait and can cash out right away? Certainly, Portland comes to mind. There may be other reasons for Paul Allen’s estate to wait a while longer, but getting a price in the $3 billion to $4 billion range right now could easily trump them.

Similarly, Michael Jordan in Charlotte has been whispered about for ages as a potential seller. Though the Hornets haven’t exactly set the league afire, he bought the team for relative peanuts in 2010 (a reported net price of $175 million) and would make a mint on a sale, perhaps 10 times what he paid. New Orleans is another franchise that many insiders mention as a sale candidate, although the search for a local buyer could stymie a transaction. Those are the known knowns, in Rumsfeld-speak.

But what about the known unknowns? Are there other owners who weren’t really thinking about selling a week ago, but now might suddenly be tempted if they can get a number like $4 billion?

And whither the T’wolves? The bizarre multi-installment sale from Glen Taylor to Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore is still creaking along toward its Dec. 31, 2023 completion date, but should anything go amiss, Taylor could seemingly make a lot more money from another buyer. Needless to say, if the new dudes so much as misplace a comma in a document, Taylor is massively incentivized to nuke the deal and start over. The valuation on that Timberwolves sale was $1.6 billion, so Taylor might make an extra billion if the team went back on the market! Fortunately, this is the Minnesota Timberwolves, so nothing crazy like that could possibly happen.

However, even that pales in comparison to the other important piece of the Suns’ sale news: what it means for expansion.


The chances of the NBA returning to Seattle keep growing. (Joe Nicholson / USA Today)

Basically, it makes it seem almost inevitable that we’ll have two new teams within the next half decade. (Not breaking any news here, but every single person I asked thinks those teams will be in Seattle and Las Vegas. My personal crusade for Bali and Kauai appears to have gained little traction.)

If you want to understand why the Phoenix sale is so important to this, do the math. The biggest obstacle to expanding from 30 teams to 32 is not a lack of available markets in which to sell tickets or pipe in local TV broadcasts. It’s because they dilute the national TV money.

The league’s national TV deal has become an increasingly large portion of teams’ budgets, and that amount is only expected to rise in the next TV deal. Adding two new franchises dilutes each one’s share of that piece by roughly 1/16, and does so in perpetuity. That would be fine if adding teams grew the TV pie proportionately, but it doesn’t, because the NBA already has more games than ESPN and TNT can possibly air. Sure, they might get slightly higher ratings in Seattle and Las Vegas than many other cities, but that’s a barely noticeable blip on a national level.

The only thing offsetting the loss of national TV money is the expansion fee, which is shared by the 30 current owners. That fee, alas, is only paid once, and not year after year, and thus needs to be many multiples of the lost annual TV revenue for the league’s owners to come out ahead — and thus, presumably, vote in favor of expansion. This is why some of my spies were pouring cold water on expansion speculation: The financial math wasn’t guaranteed to pencil out for the 30 owners.

The exact break-even point is a complex calculation based on projections of future TV revenues, future interest rates and investment returns, an estimate of the expansion fee and what economists call the discount rate for the time value of money, accounting for the fact you’d rather have your money today than 10 years from now.

Instead, let me make some grossly simplifying assumptions to walk you through the exercise. I have an economics degree and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. This should go great.

The last TV deal was $24 billion over nine years. Let’s say the next one is $75 billion over nine years, which some have estimated.

Now, for some math. (Sorry). Divide by 30 and you have each team’s share of that package ($2.5 billion). Divide that number by nine and you have each team’s annual share ($277 million). That share, in turn, is diluted 1/16 by expansion. The dilution, then, is worth about $17.3 million annually. If an owner’s financial mandarins end up with a 10 percent annual discount on future revenues (this is a quasi-reasonable ballpark), they will want the expansion fee to be at least 10 times the diluted revenue to justify a yes vote.

And that is why an expansion fee in the $4 billion to $5 billion range is so important. It’s so much easier to pencil out the owners coming out ahead than if the fee were, say, in the $3 billion to $3.5 billion range.

Which, in turn, is much easier to imagine happening if an existing franchise just sold for $4 billion. Most observers I spoke with see a Vegas team as being of similar or slightly greater value than Phoenix, and a Seattle team as being worth considerably more. Suppose, for argument’s sake, it was $4 billion for Vegas and $5 billion for Seattle. That’s an instant $300 million windfall for every owner … and a roughly 17x ratio to the diluted TV money.

Yes, my math here involves sweeping assumptions and simplifications. Nonetheless, let’s exit the financial weeds here and conclude with the big-picture takeaway from this exercise. If the expansion fees were $3 billion, it would seem like a close call for the league’s owners to approve it.

If it’s at $4 billion? It’s a no-brainer.


The Knicks’ punishment for tampering with Jalen Brunson was as tame, as expected. (Brad Penner / USA Today)

Some other thoughts from the Showcase:

That’ll show ‘em, huh?

The other hot topic in league circles was the collective eye roll at the NBA’s decision to penalize the Knicks a 2025 second-round pick for tampering in signing Jalen Brunson. As many have already noted, giving up a second-rounder to sign a max-level free agent is a trade every team in the league would make in a nanosecond. Once you’re dealing with All-Stars and max players, there is no amount of second-round picks the league could penalize a team to disincentivize them.

On the flip side, league personnel I talked to recognized the impossibility of the league’s situation. The underlying issue isn’t that the Knicks (or Sixers, for that matter) cheated the letter of the rule this summer, but that the current rules on free agency are virtually unenforceable. There is only one rule most execs really care about: Tampering with a player whose team is still playing games remains an absolutely uncrossable red line, one that should be punished with a decades-long banishment to a dank, windowless cell, containing only a bed made of carpet from the visiting locker room in Oracle Arena and a big screen TV showing games from the 1998-99 lockout year.

As for jumping the July 1 deadline on contacting free agents by a few hours (or days, or weeks) …. whatevs. There are rules written on paper about audits and commandeering phones and whatnot, but nobody wants to actually do that.

In reality, the league’s de facto policy is “just don’t embarrass us.” Which is hard to write about, because we’ve become part of the problem.

News flash: Teams have been jumping the gun on free agency for years and years and years. The news just didn’t get out nearly as fast in the past. It worked in 2012. It doesn’t in 2022.

You can see the problem: The league doesn’t want news leaking of complicated sign-and-trades mere seconds into the alleged start of free agency, nor does it want breathless coverage of back-and-forth free agent negotiations on June 26. Well, good luck with that. Unless every social media outlet simultaneously fails while cutthroat reporters throttle back to Andrea Bargnani-esque tameness, it’s virtually impossible to keep the genie bottled.

The Elam ending factored prominently in the Showcase, even if the word Elam was never mentioned.

The G League has used it in overtime all year to generally positive reviews, requiring teams to score eight points rather than playing for a specified amount of time. That change got a thumbs-up from NBA personnel I spoke to, with the consensus being that NBA overtimes are too long right now and deflate drama from the end of the fourth quarter. The target score also eliminated the chance of multiple overtimes and the crazy player minute situations they can engender. The G League staffers all love it, too.

However, using it for the entire fourth quarter generated opposite reactions. Playing a fourth quarter with a “target” of 25 points more than the leading team’s score, rather than a set time, created a host of new issues. For starters, coaches were left guessing on substitutions without a clock to indicate how long players had played (or rested).

This was particularly true in lower-scoring games, a couple of which became interminable as teams struggled to hit the target score. And this was in today’s more open, offensive era! Imagine my Grizzlies playing, say, Utah in 2016, and try to figure out how long they’d need to play for one team to get to 25.

Secondarily, the target score produced some interesting strategy of its own. If your opponent is three points away from the target score, do you foul to eliminate losing on a 3-pointer? Concede a layup to do the same? (I saw a couple of teams in this situation hug all the shooters and leave gaping holes down Main Street). What about in a one-point game? Would any ref dare call defensive three seconds?

For those reasons, the Elam ending seems much more likely to gain eventual NBA-wide adoption in overtime than in regulation. Regardless, kudos to the league for continuing to use the G League as a lab to experiment with improvements to the game.

(Top photo: Lucas Peltier / USA Today)



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Kyrie Irving’s return to basketball won’t put an end to the controversy he started

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NEW YORK — There were two microphones Sunday night, and each one told a story all its own.

The one on the platform between Atlantic Ave. and Flatbush, between the subway station and an arena, belonged to one man as he spoke to scores of men in purple and yellow sweatshirts lined up in unison to listen, as well as to passersby going to that night’s Nets–Grizzlies game or just minding their own business. The voice coming from that microphone was unceasing, speaking of biblical passages, of his people, of the Holocaust in Germany, comparing it to the one they have faced and remarking it was not quite as bad. He said they were the real Jews, “not you nominals.” He was, if not the leader of the group of some 300 members of Israelites United In Christ who settled outside the Barclays Center for hours Sunday, at least its voice. He talked for hours on a blisteringly cold night as the rest gave out pamphlets proselytizing for their cause, giving their warped truth of antisemitism, the kind that caused the group to be flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Inside the arena, a few hours later, Kyrie Irving took to a microphone again, a routine but fraught occurrence by now for the Nets star. The group that had taken up so much space and noise around Barclays, lining the streets, unmistakable and unavoidable, had come not because of him, but in response to him. Irving had tweeted out a link to the Amazon page for an antisemitic movie, refused to apologize for it and showed no remorse. Four days later, caught in the middle of a storm, he played at home, and this group appeared, too. He did not play again until Sunday night, having been suspended by the Nets in the interim. Just as he returned from a 19-day absence from the Nets, they did, too.

Of all the criticism lobbed at Irving after the tweet that started it all, the most poignant and real was not that he was actually antisemitic or full of hate. It was that he had shared a piece of propaganda, giving oxygen to the kind of tropes and lies that Jews have faced for centuries, and refused to condemn it forcefully and quickly, choosing elliptical restraint instead until he was finally suspended and could not ignore the criticism anymore. Irving may be about love and peace, as he insists, but these were the consequences that many feared. A diminishment of pain, of death, of the horrors that ruined the lives of so many men and women and families, for generations. Right there, on Atlantic Ave. and Flatbush.

Video via Mike Vorkunov / The Athletic

By Sunday night, Irving had already submitted his apologies. He had made one in an Instagram post two weeks ago, but after he had been cast away by the Nets’ organization. He had made another one that afternoon, in his return to the Nets, after, he said, speaking with Jewish leaders. Irving still bristled at times, indicating he felt misunderstood and mislabeled, but he was regretful and meant no harm, he said.

Now, Irving wanted only to focus on the game, a 127-112 win over the Grizzlies in which he had played 26 minutes and scored 14 points. He had missed his teammates and his coaches, he said, and they welcomed him back with ease. Jacque Vaughn, newly hired as head coach while Irving was away, said he laid out the ground rules to Irving in a chat that day.

“It’s about hooping, and I use that word right there that from this day on, that’s what we’re going to be about,” Vaughn said. “Basketball is factual. You get the rebound, that’s a fact. You box out, that’s a fact. You make the shot, that’s a fact. We’re going to make this thing factual. It’s going to be about basketball and we’ll live in that space.”

As if Irving’s slipperiness with facts was not the reason this had metastasized into the situation he and the Nets found themselves in this month. It was hard to say the Nets had returned to normal just yet. The scene inside the press conference room at Barclays on Sunday indicated how irregular this all was. As Irving spoke, Shetellia Riley Irving, his agent and stepmother, and Tamika Tremaglio, the NBPA executive director, listened along just feet away, as did other union officials.

When a reporter laid out the scene above, of the demonstrators who had come out in support, Irving demurred. That conversation would be for another day, he said. This press conference just about the game.

Just hours earlier, Irving had proclaimed he had come to realize the voice he carries, the one with 4.7 million Twitter followers and the pedestal that comes attached to international fame, and now he hoped to harness it.

“This is a big moment for me, because I’m able to learn throughout this process that the power of my voice is very strong,” Irving said that afternoon. “The influence that I have within my community is very strong, and I want to be responsible for that. In order to do that, you have to admit when you’re wrong in instances where you hurt people, and it impacts them.”

But when another reporter asked if the demonstrators had come out as a consequence of what he had done, he demurred once more.

“Again,” he said. “I’m just here to focus on the game.”

The time for mea culpas may be over, at least for Irving. Basketball questions will soon fill the vacuum left behind by the chaos of the last few weeks. A quotidian trance will take over after the uneasiness that unsettled a franchise.

Irving missed eight games in a most unusual way, punished not for what he said, but what he then refused to say despite chance after chance to do so. He said that he may still seek legal options to rectify the eight games of pay he lost, though there is no timetable in place for that process. NBPA leaders, like union vice president Jaylen Brown, may have taken issue with his suspension and the terms for his comeback, but the NBPA will not file a grievance with the league against the Nets, Tremaglio told The Athletic.


Protesters from the Israelites United In Christ line up at Barclays Center in support of Kyrie Irving. (Mike Vorkunov / The Athletic)

Now, Irving has his voice back. Others have already heard it and found it as an opportunity to amplify their own. It was hard not to hear it in Brooklyn Sunday night.

But he will use it on his own terms, he reminded everyone Sunday night. He, ultimately, picks when to make the most of the platform he has built. Irving has sought atonement, he has sought forgiveness and clarity, and after nearly a month of controversy, he was asked when he will use that microphone to discuss what is his said in his name.

“I would like to be on a platform where I could openly share how I feel without being harshly criticized or being labeled or dealing with outside perceptions that have nothing to do with me,” he said. “Again, I said this morning, I just want to elaborate on just everyone getting to know who Kai is, what AI is, and what I represent in my tribe. That’s it.”

(Photo of Kyrie Irving: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)

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Koreen: Why Kyrie Irving’s apology matters, even if it doesn’t absolve him



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Kyrie Irving returns to the Brooklyn Nets after serving 8-game suspension

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CNN
 — 

Kyrie Irving’s eight-game suspension ended Sunday as the star point guard suited up for the Brooklyn Nets game against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Irving hadn’t played for the Nets since November 1. The Nets suspended Irving November 3 after he tweeted a link to a documentary containing antisemitic messages, followed by an initial refusal to issue an apology.

Irving has since issued multiple apologies, including during his pregame media availability Sunday.

“I just want to offer my deep apologies to all those who were impacted over these last few weeks, specifically my Jewish relatives, my Black relatives, all races and cultures,” Irving said Sunday. “Feel like we all felt an impact and I don’t stand for anything close to hate speech or antisemitism or anything that is ‘anti,’ going against the human race.”

“I feel it was necessary for me to stand in this place and take accountability for my actions,” Irving said.

Irving received a warm welcome from the Brooklyn crowd during player introductions before tip-off. He finished the night with 14 points and five rebounds in the Nets’ 127-115 victory over the Grizzlies.

Irving said after the game that it “felt good” to be back on the court.

“Missed my teammates,” Irving told reporters. “Missed the coaching staff. Just getting prepared with them in the morning and carrying over to the game, it felt good.”

When asked if he would file a grievance over his suspension, Irving said he’d leave that decision to his legal team.

“I have some strong people, men and women, around me that are going to do everything possible to make sure that I’m protected and my family’s protected and we protect one another, so I’m sure some things will be done in the future,” Irving said. “There’s no timetable on that right now.”

Speaking before Sunday’s game, Nets coach Jacque Vaughn showed no hesitation about his decision to put Irving on the floor to start the game.

“He’ll start, and we’ll see where his conditioning is, the pace of the game which we want to play at. Excited to have him back on the floor with our group, and he’ll fit right in,” Vaughn said.

During an interview Saturday with SNY’s Ian Begley, Irving said he reacted emotionally to being called “antisemitic.”

“I felt like I was protecting my character and I reacted out of just pure defense and just hurt that I could be labeled, or I thought that I was being labeled as antisemitic or anti-Jewish, and I’ve felt like that was just so disrespectful to ask me whether or not I was antisemitic or not,” Irving said.

The Nets’ next scheduled game is Tuesday at the Philadelphia 76ers.

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Nets held players-only meeting to discuss Ben Simmons’ performance: Sources

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The Brooklyn Nets held a players-only meeting on Oct. 29 to discuss point guard Ben Simmons’ performance this season, sources with direct knowledge of those meetings, but who are unauthorized to speak about it, tell The Athletic. Here’s what you need to know:

  • The team’s level of exasperation toward Simmons bubbled to the surface when they met after a loss to the Indiana Pacers.
  • Veteran forward Markieff Morris spoke in front of the team about how they need Simmons to succeed and that he has to respond when he deals with adversity on the court.
  • Simmons appeared to take Morris’ words in stride and was responsive and attentive throughout, sources said.

Backstory

The Nets have dealt with months of turmoil in the organization, including a coaching change and a still ongoing off-court controversy with star guard Kyrie Irving that resulted in his indefinite suspension, which has now reached seven games.

On Nov. 1, Brooklyn parted ways with coach Steve Nash after a 2-5 start to the season. The Nets named assistant Jacque Vaughn as interim head coach, and The Athletic reported that the franchise planned to hire suspended Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka. The reported plan for Brooklyn to hire Udoka drew criticism because Boston suspended the coach in September for the 2022-23 season due to his intimate relationship with a female member of the Celtics organization, The Athletic reported.

The Nets changed course from their initial plan to hire Udoka and promoted Vaughn to head coach on Nov. 9.

On the court, the Nets have struggled to a 6-9 record. Simmons made his return from back surgery in May to play in the early part of this season but recently missed eight days to have his left knee drained because of fluid.

After beginning the season as the starting point guard, Simmons has been in the backup center spot in his last four games. It marks the first time he has come off the bench in his seven NBA seasons. He was a late scratch in Sunday’s loss to the Lakers, with the team citing left knee soreness as the reason for his absence.

This early season stretch has been merely the latest setback in two years of injuries and health problems for Simmons.

What Simmons is saying

In a discussion with The Athletic, Simmons acknowledged the criticism that he knows is coming his way.

“You’re obviously not gonna be happy when anybody’s out,” Simmons said. “But for me, I’ve been dealing with the knee since the start of the season. It’s been swollen. I had PRP (injections). I had blood drained a couple times. So it’s not a made up thing, you know? It’s a real thing.

“I get (the skepticism), but I think the one thing with me is that I’m a competitor. I want to win and play. So I’m gonna do what I can to get out there.”

Required reading

(Photo: Wendell Cruz / USA Today)



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Charles Barkley reacts to Kyrie Irving and Dave Chappelle – CNN

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  1. Charles Barkley reacts to Kyrie Irving and Dave Chappelle CNN
  2. Stein: Kyrie Irving ‘itching to get back on the floor’ but situation remains ‘fluid’ Nets Daily
  3. Charles Barkley Has Brutally Honest Admission On ‘Free Speech’ The Spun
  4. NBPA VP Jaylen Browns takes aim at Joe Tsai over Kyrie Irving ban: ‘It’s time for a larger conversation’ New York Daily News
  5. Mark Cuban on Kyrie Irving and Kanye West anti-Semitic comments – “You’d just assume they’re crazy and keep on walking” Basketball Network
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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NBA’s City Edition jerseys for 2022-23 are out. Here are some of their backstories

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The NBA released its newest slate of City Edition jerseys, the ones teams will wear for the 2022-23 season. These uniforms, from jersey to shorts, usually carry some kind of thematic tie to the franchise’s home city.

The Athletic spoke to Jesse Alvarez, Nike’s product director of men’s basketball, to get a sense of how some of the most notable City Edition jerseys were designed and the details fans should look for when watching their teams play.

I want to start with the Spurs jersey. Can you walk me through the design and the inspiration for it?


Photo courtesy of the NBA.

The Spurs, I think, as a lot of people remember, have one of the most iconic All Star Game uniforms that we’ve done, just in the world of jersey culture. So you can see some pretty clear nods to that in terms of just the color and the vibe. That was really the focus for that one, to be able to tie that in. You asked about some of the details: I think the belt buckle ‘SA’ and the Spur logos on the belt hook was just like a really nice way to round out and add a subtle detail to highlight the All Star uniform that they’ve been synonymous with.

So I recognize the coloring for that when I’m looking at those jerseys. The Pistons ones are green, a color I don’t associate usually with Pistons colors. What happened there?

Detroit has an amazing story. One of the things about that story is St. Cecilia. So St. Cecilia is really a place where players used to go run and play pickup basketball. And so that color, the green, is inspired by the actual St. Cecilia. That, coupled with the iconic details of the short patch, you’ll actually see like a stained glass or a grab that’s inspired by the stained glass that shows up at St. Cecilia, with a 313 logo at the center of it just as a way to weave those stories together. The mantra of St. Cecilia was ‘Where stars are made, not born.’ So it just really packages that story all together to bring that to life.

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Did you guys send people there to kind of look through the gym and just walk through it?

Yeah, so we actually partner with the team, and so the team was over there. They’re sending us pictures, you name it. Anything that we needed, we got to be able to really bring that to life. Like with any uniform, really, it starts with the team. They know their fan bases the best. And so that’s where all those points of inspiration are coming from.


Photo courtesy of the NBA.

For you, do you have a favorite jersey?

You know, it’s funny, I was just telling someone it’s hard to have a favorite. Especially, they all feel like your kids. But I think, just right behind you, Chicago. I really like Chicago. I think how the municipal Y shows up in a number of different ways. And the symbology behind it, like uniting a city and how the Bulls at the center of the the Y on the side profile. I think this is a great representation of how a team is at the heart of a city. So Chicago is where I live.

I liked the color pattern on the Timberwolves one, but obviously it’s not something that’s associated with the Wolves. What is that about? What makes that unique?

One of the unique things about City Edition (jerseys) just in general, before I answer your question, is that with each story from an organization, they get to take it to wherever place they want to go. So Minnesota is known as being a creative hotspot for artists of all sorts. That (jersey) is a nod to some of the creative community. So one of the things that makes that uniform unique is that the pattern that you see in the uniform, it actually gets cut in a different way for every uniform. So every uniform is a unique one, just kind of as a way that each creative is unique in their own way. So that’s really how that story comes to life.

So you guys have like a big pattern of all these colors. Each swatch is different for each uniform?

Think about it more in in terms of when you think about how a uniform was made, each piece gets cut, so no two pieces are the same. So when they’re sewing those things together, every uniform is going to be slightly different, just like a fingerprint.


Photo courtesy of the NBA.

I know sometimes you guys collaborate not only with teams but with like certain individuals on creating the jerseys. Is there anyone notable here that helps you with the creation, with the ideation of some jerseys?

Yeah, Detroit’s a great example. Big Sean is the creative director with the Pistons, so he’s somebody who helped bring that to life. Right behind you, you have KITH with the New York Knicks. Those are those are the two teams that are top of mind. Just kind of highlight some of the names that also work with organizations to bring their city edition uniforms to life.

I was looking at the Hornets’. That’s the angriest hornet I’ve ever seen in my life.

It’s an aggressive hornet. Really cool story, I think, centered around the Mint. So one of the cool things — I’m not sure if you were able to take a look at it — but the pinstripes are actually a nod to the Mint. The Mint is, you know, the source of inspiration for that uniform. The gold lettering with the mint trim, just harkens back to the financial inspiration with the Mint being in Charlotte.


Heat City Edition jersey” width=”1022″ height=”1024″ /> Photo courtesy of the NBA.

And the last one, I heard you talking about the Heat jersey. Can you kind of walk me through that one, especially the rope on the side. That seems to be a really cool detail.

So if you’ve ever turned on a game for the Heat, you’ll see that there’s actual yellow rope that surround the cord. They use the yellow piping to be able to be inspired by that yellow rope that you will see during the game. Their concept is kind of their chapter two of their mashup that they introduced last year.

This year, they flipped the color to white and then they took different components from previous iconic elements of their identity and mash those up together to be able to have this customized look. So you’ll see elements of their Floridians, their white hot, vice versa. All those different kinds of stamps in time that have made up the Heat organization, all mashed up into one uniform.

(All photos courtesy of the NBA)



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