The Dallas Mavericks' New Nike City Edition Uniforms Are Duds

Dallas Mavericks guard Dennis Smith Jr. (1) handles the ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday, Jan. 26, 2018, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

The Dallas Mavericks’ new alternate jerseys have been leaked. Images of the redesigned
Nike
City Edition uniform popped up on social media and elsewhere Wednesday afternoon. The Mavericks will officially reveal the jerseys at an RSVP only event Thursday night in Dallas. While they are different than last season's they suffer from the same lack of originality and creativity.

@NickVanExit Hey, found this pretty good pic of the City jerseys while looking for Mavs stuff in the Mexican Nike web shop. pic.twitter.com/0Q7ITfvWC4

— David Villanueva (@EsDeib) November 7, 2018

Like last year's design, the new one is black with multicolored piping. Gone, however, is the bold “DAL” from the chest, replaced with the Mavs’ round stallion and basketball logo that debuted in 2001. Also gone is the hint of green last season’s jersey featured. The green represented the bright LED lighting, most notably of Bank of America Plaza, that is featured on many of downtown Dallas’ skyscrapers. Instead, the 2018 jersey sticks with familiar hues of blue.

Nike’s City Edition jerseys, which the company began releasing for each
NBA
team after taking over as the league’s apparel provider in 2017, are intended to “represent insights and emotion from the court to the upper deck to the cities’ streets, in pursuit of a unique way to capture each team and its city in a way that respects the past and present of the clubs while also positioning them for the future,” Nike’s website states.

If that’s the case, the Mavericks’ new uniforms are a failure. Nothing about them correlates to the city of Dallas nor do they speak to the team’s past or future. While the city of Dallas doesn’t have a readily defined cultural identity—beyond stereotypes of Stetsons, big hair, and big money—absolutely nothing about the new jersey lends itself to assuming that the city and the team have a culture at all.

It’s a shame that Dallas’ jerseys fall so flat considering some of the designs that Nike has come up with to represent other teams. Some of them are stellar. Instead, Dallas’ new on-court look resembles that of second-rate merchandise that has been sold in fan shops and sporting goods stores for the past 17 years. Nothing about it is forward thinking or aesthetically desirable.

Sadly, this is what fans have come to expect from the Mavericks. The team seems to leap at the most banal design options every time they look for something new. Even though last season’s City Edition uniforms were uninspiring, they were different and hinted at Dallas' skyline. Because of that, they are better than the duds the Mavs are rolling out now. The Mavericks are a team in desperate need of a redesign, but the new City Edition jerseys aren’t it.