Another week, another leak.
This week it was the 2014 NBA All-Star Game jerseys, which were posted early to the website of a French basketball shop and then subsequently displayed at a FootLocker booth before the NBA's London, England game.
While this is surely not how the NBA and adidas wanted this unveiling to go down, they handled the situation as best as they possibly could, by officially unveiling the jerseys a couple hours after the leak went viral. Well done.
The jerseys, like all new uniforms in the NBA these days, are sleeved. The Western Conference in red and purple, the East in blue and green. With the game being played in New Orleans both jerseys were inspired by "the city's history, culture, and music." Translation: The jerseys have a large fleur-de-lis logo on the chest.
On the back is the player number and name with team logo below in chrome. An additional player number is on one sleeve, up each side of the jersey are the familiar three white adidas stripes.
adidas took the unveiling as an opportunity to explain why the influx of sleeved jerseys these days:
"We looked at the landscape of basketball, we saw players playing in t-shirts everywhere, fans on the street wearing sleeves and NBA players in practice. So for us, we thought it was a great opportunity to introduce something new and innovative. It took us a long time to develop it, to make sure the sleeves perform the way we needed them to, the way we’ve engineered the gusset, there’s no resistance. It plays and feels like just like a regular jersey." - Chris Grancio, Global Head of Basketball Sports Marketing at adidas
If you hate 'em, too bad, these things are selling like hotcakes, far better than adidas or the NBA anticipated... although I don't know a single soul who likes them, let alone purchased one.
Speaking of sleeved NBA jerseys, next year we're supposed to see a whole lot more, with the news that the league is planning a "heritage" jersey program which would see 20 teams wear old-timey throwback uniforms... except that they'll all be sleeved now.
We got our first look at a sleeveless version of one that's reportedly being worked on, the Brooklyn Nets, who are combining their classic 1980s New Jersey Nets look with the black-and-white colour scheme of today's Nets brand. Don't get too hopeful looking at that image, this jersey will have sleeves once it's ready for on-court action.
In addition to the Nets and their new look we also got a "possibly in-progress/possibly prototype/possibly final" version of the revived Charlotte Hornets uniforms for next season, which, aside from the main colour, does not appear much like the Hornets teams of the 90s at all. There's a good chance things will be added to this design, personally I'm hoping for some pinstripes and a hint of purple.
In baseball, the Chicago Cubs undoubtedly broke a world record for most team uniforms unveiled in a single day when they showed off the ten new uniforms they'll wear in 2014.
First, the new road alternate, which will be worn for select road games only, is grey with "CUBS" spelled out across the chest in a straight line in a no-nonsense block blue font. It's somewhat reminiscent of the Cubbies uniforms of the 1920s... which was just a mere 15 years into their World Series draught.
Also unveiled were nine throwback jerseys which will be worn on Sunday home games throughout the upcoming season to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field. The team will wear one jersey for every decade of Wrigley Field baseball starting with the uniform of the 1914 Chicago Federals on April 23rd and finishing up with the 1994 Cubs blue alternate "Cuba" uniforms on August 24th.
You can see a full list of all the throwback Cubs jerseys and the date they'll be worn here.
Majestic Athletic is in the process of rolling out the new batting practice/Spring Training jerseys for every MLB team, over the past week they tweeted out the new looks of 10 teams.
The changes are hardly drastic, with most teams simply reducing their side stripe from all-the-way down to just around the underarm. Every team also has piping around their collar which does not go all the way around the neck.
After we saw the leaked new looks last year we saw several teams were wearing "split" color designs, i.e. the front of the jersey was a different color from the back. So far, none of these innovative new "split" color looks have been released.
Not diggin' the new B.P. looks? Just wait three years, the whole league will likely be re-designed, once again, for Spring Training 2017.
We'll wrap things up with a look at what could've been in the NFL, behold...
The Super Bowl XLVIII that never was. You can see more "phantom" merchandise from this year's Super Bowl and conference championships here.
Chris Creamer is the creator and editor of SportsLogos.net. You can follow him on twitter at @sportslogosnet.
