We already knew that the NBA had too many uniformsBut the Thunder took things to a new level Friday night against the Hawks, wearing different uniforms each half of their game against Atlanta.
There was a good reason for the change, namely that the NBA has too many damn uniforms. The Hawks showed up on the Oklahoma City court with their (verification notes) Icon T-shirts, while the Thunder got his (check the notes again) Statement T-shirts.
The result was an incredibly stupid showdown of red vs orange.
G / O Media can get a commission
Unbelievably, the Thunder, the home team, with the ability to wear whatever uniform they could muster, I tried to blame the Hawks fiasco “wearing the wrong color uniform for the game.”
The Hawks apparently only brought in red uniforms on their road trip, almost as if they thought they could get away with such a quirky concept as “road uniforms.” The Thunder may have been incredulous at this, but they kindly switched to white uniforms at halftime, no sorry (check notes one more time) Association Shirts.
The Thunder edged the Hawks, 63-55, in orange, and edged Atlanta, 55-54, in white, for a 118-109 final.
The worst part about this is that it wasn’t just a strange event. Uniform elections were made beforehand and the situation was completely avoidable.
In 2013, the red and orange Hawks-Knicks clash was a much more understandable mistake. New York wore their orange substitutes for the fourth time, and NBA rules at the time required home team To get this, “wear light colored t-shirts and visitors dark t-shirts, unless otherwise approved.”
The orange had been designated as a light-colored alternate jersey and NBA Vice President Tim Frank stated, “Going forward, we will make sure the opponent wears a more distinctive color when the Knicks wear orange.”
However, he didn’t say anything about the orange-clad Thunder.
Sorry, not orange. “Sunset.” Is it a basketball league or an LL Bean catalog?