Hawkish on Atlanta

Check this out. The Atlanta Hawks have changed uniforms AGAIN. Doesn't it seem like they get more image makeovers than Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? It never seems to take. The reasons are obvious. One, the team is bad. Two, the makeovers usually entail some variation on orange, yellow, and black which has to be one of the most ill-advised color combos for any sports franchise in existence. Your fans want to wear your licensed apparel, but if it looks like that no one but the most insanely die hard fans will shell out the cash to wear something the dog coughed up. Third, changing so many times is a signal to people that you don't have your shit together. Why would you be a fan of a team that can't figure out who it is?

Your new $150 jersey may be out of date in a year. Your attachment to certain players may end up going out the window as the team figures it needs wholesale changes to avoid another embarrassing trip to the lottery. Imagine that you pay premium money for seats and apparel for a team that is never the same year in and year out. You buy the new 2007 #12 Johnny Hawks jersey only to find that not only has the whole uniform changed, but that Johnny Hawks is now Johnny Raptors a season later. No wonder the arena in Atlanta is always empty.

Anyway, the Hawks have gone back to red, white, blue, and silver as their color scheme and they've jazzed up the hawk logo. It reminds me a lot of the change the Blue Jays made a couple of years ago in changing from the more ornithologically correct head shot of a Blue Jay, to the attack-mode killer Blue Jay that now graces their uniforms. What do the Hawks hope to accomplish by doing this? It's obvious. They want to suck less. Well, actually they really want to appear as though they suck less, right? They are still going to suck until they get a clue about how to build a better basketball team, but they'll look less suckish sucking this season.

The Hawks website has a little pictorial slideshow of past Hawks uniforms and a timeline of what they wore, when they wore it. I'll post the timeline jpeg here for you to click and enlarge and then run down some of the more egregious uniforms in the selection with a little commentary. Here we go:


First, Pete Maravich was a genius. He died way too young, and it's noteworthy that he would have been 60 this month. Playing like "Pistol Pete" would make just about any uniform look reasonable, but even so this was a stretch. It's funny to me to see this oddball uni, knowing that there was virtually no such thing in this world as marketing in 1970, at least as we know it today.

Putting a line green uniform on someone and expecting a good reaction is a bit far fetched, but I have to admit that those uniforms are appealing in a kind of retro-mod way. Especially the matching striped socks. I think it's probably cooler to walk around with this uniform on in 2007 than it was to play in it in 1970.

Soon after, the Hawks changed directions and opted for the orange and yellow monstrosity that they wore for decades after.

I skipped over some of the more nondescript orange and yellow uniforms. They all look like something out of Hoosiers. Block letters on the front. Generic, clip art, numbers. For a good stretch, the Hawks just wore boring uniforms, not so much ugly. If you look at this uniform from the 80's and early 90's, you'll know it as the most famous uniform in the team's history. The reason being, Dominique was the ticket to highlight reels everywhere. Dominique, in many ways, was the inventor of the SportCenter coverage of basketball.

If you do a 360 windmill dunk in game action, you will 100% without fail be on television over and over and over and over and over for about 2 months. This uniform is ugly. It's hideous. It's like the classic SuperSonics uniform with a worse color scheme and goofy lettering. The thing is, Dominique wore it and did magical things on the court. That, in and of itself, makes it cool. I wouldn't wear one, but.....


...it's certainly more imaginative than this from 1992. As the quality of player wearing the uniform went south (Pistol Pete, 'Nique, Mookie Blalock) the interest factor in the uniform also disappeared. At least the other versions of the Hawks uniform were either wild or boring. This uniform has no redeeming quality whatsoever. It's gaudy, but uninteresting. The lettering is splashed across the front like Shazam, but there are no other flair points. The arm and necklines of this uniform are yellow and white piping surrounded by a giant field of red.

Come to think of it, these look a lot like the ugly Rockets uniforms of the Hakeem Olajuwon era, only with cartoonish letters across the chest. Make up your minds Atlanta. Are you going to look like ridiculous superheroes, or are you going for the tragically boring look? I'm guessing that our next Hawks uniform will be infinitely worse, somehow.


OH GOD!!!! I'M BLIND!!!! OH, MY EYES!!! LORD HELP ME!!!!

Boy, was I right. Someone got my message, presumably by traveling ahead in time and reading this blog. Gone is the mix of cartoon and blah, and welcomed to Atlanta was the 1996 full blown cartoon jersey. This monstrosity featured the current team logo in it's earlier orange form, vomited across the front of a gradated black and orange field. It's like the "zubaz" version of an NBA uniform. Gaudy. Classless. Without any chance of aging gracefully. I love the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Celtics, and a few other teams' uniforms because they have changed very little generation to generation. Those are all respectable sports franchises because (1) they win, and (2) they dress respectfully, so they aren't the laughing stock when they lose.

Nobody fly in the house of Mutombo.

I also skipped the more recent Hawks uniforms. They haven't been as bad as that Mutombo jammie, so I figured I'd give them a pass, although they did go with a full yellow version that can be seen in the timeline jpeg found above. That alone should give the Supreme Court impetus to overturn the First Amendment, on the grounds that not all expression can be reasonably accepted by a decent and moral society. The 2007-08 uniforms are okay. They look a lot like the Nets uniforms, frankly. Red, white, and blue are played out as far as I'm concerned. The Houston Texans of the NFL went with the scheme despite the Bills and Giants already wearing it. The Ohio NHL club wears it despite the Rangers having worn those colors for a million years. The Washington Nationals chose it despite the Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs having made those schemes famous. There's nothing particularly original about red, white, and blue these days. It plays up the whole nationalism thing that's popular nowadays. We are proud Americans, and such. These colors don't run, especially in the deep south. Yee ha!

It does nothing to change my perception of the sad sack Hawks. It doesn't make me waver in my belief that the basketball Gods should open up the earth and swallow that franchise into the pits of Hell. The team still isn't any good, and they won't be any good in our lifetimes. Joe Johnson is a nice player. Josh Smith is busting out. Uh.....there's that guy with the afro. And, tiny point guard guy. Not to mention, stiff lifeless big man, whatshisname? Tree Rollins? Uh...plus "As yet to be Named 2007 Lottery Draft Pick" and "2008 As Yet to be Named Lottery Draft Pick" and "As Yet to be Named 2009 Lottery Draft Pick" and....

Nice uniforms. Good luck with that.