Franchises in Pursuit of Perfect Team Logo

By Ron Higgins

Memphis Grizzlies

Since the early 1990s in the NBA, the way to sell an image makeover of your team is to open a new arena, get a new logo, change colors and order a uniform redesign.

Call it "Marketing Eyes for the NBA Guys."

Houston did in this past season with the opening of the Toyota Center. Dallas took the plunge in '01 when the Mavs moved into the American Airlines Arena. Golden State's new logo appeared in '97 when the Warriors began playing in their new digs in Oakland. Phoenix's move in '92 to America West prompted a logo change.

It's the same with the Grizzlies as they prepare to call FedExForum home in the upcoming season. With the logo and new colors of Memphis Midnight, Beale Street Blue, Smoke Blue and Grizzlies Gold revealed on May 24, the team will unveil its new uniforms today at the entrance to AutoZone Park.

"Our logo design that won was liked by everyone who saw it and who had input in the selection process," said Mike Golub, the Grizzlies' vice president of business operations. "It reflects the region and the fans of Memphis, something about where this franchise is now and where it's going."

In the last decade, more than half of the teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and major league baseball have changed uniform styles and/or logos. And that doesn't count such tweaks as alternate Sunday jerseys, such as the Los Angeles Lakers' hot selling all-white unis, or the St. Louis Cardinals' blue Sunday caps with the cardinal perched on a baseball logo.

When the Grizzlies moved to Memphis from Vancouver in 2001, the plan was to create a totally new identity. Change the nickname, the colors and the logo. But through fan surveys, the franchise discovered Memphis fans identified with the nickname.

But the logo and the colors were another matter.

Marla Taner, the Grizzlies' senior director of marketing communication, said the original logo and colors of red, teal, black and white were designed and chosen by the NBA.

"If you looked at our logo, it was this huge teal 'Grizzlies' and the city, whether it was Vancouver or Memphis, in small letters," Taner said. "You see the Grizzlies rather than the city."

There was no doubt that some players disliked the Grizzlies' color scheme, which in the Vancouver days included an all-teal uniform.

"I hated those uniforms, they were awful," said Sacramento guard Mike Bibby, who played for the Grizzlies from 1998-2001.

In a logo, color and uniform redesign, everybody has a different philosophy. Is it more important to design something you can merchandise, or something that appeals to basic fashion sense?

Once upon a time, before the NBA established parameters on redesign, it seemed teams changed colors, logos and uniforms when they felt like it.

For instance:

One-time Sonics coach Bill Russell hated his team's script lettering so much that he decided after one season in the mid '70s to change the uniforms to reflect the Celtics' jerseys that Russell once wore.

The 76ers have changed logos and uniform styles 11 times since the franchise landed in Philadelphia in 1963. During the last switch in '97, the team added silver, gold and black to the traditional red, white and blue.

Milwaukee switched logos and colors in 1993, going from kelly, forest and lime, to purple, hunter green and silver. The logo changed from a happy basketball-spinning Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer type to an angry eight-point buck with an attitude. Then-Bucks coach Mike Dunleavy scoured area department stores with his three sons to get a feel of how the youth market was reacting to the new look.

Detroit had switched away from the red, white and blue scheme associated with the NBA title-winning Bad Boys teams, and for five years went with teal, black, yellow and red, before going back to red, white and blue before the 2001-02 season. In that case, the franchise heeded what fan surveys indicated. The last few years in the NBA, two of the more successful image changes have been in Texas with Dallas and Houston.

The Mavericks introduced a new logo and uniforms, finally getting rid of a logo that had been around since 1980. Tim Henning, director of merchandising, said that everyone from owner Mark Cuban to the players were consulted on the colors and the look.

"We had designers at Nike design our uniforms," Henning said. "We wanted to find a color scheme that the average fan could wear with jeans, and that was blue, royal, silver and black. To us, it's important at the end of the day that fans want to wear our product."

Not everything went smoothly for the Mavericks. When they introduced an alternate jersey top, nobody could really tell, especially watching a TV broadcast of a game, what color the jersey was supposed to be. Once players started sweating, it changed colors.

"It was supposed to be silver, and it came off on TV as a brownish purple," Henning said. "We wore those one time, and that's it."

But that hasn't deterred the Mavs from experimenting. This season, they are supposed to break out another alternate jersey, this one designed by rapper P. Diddy, who already has the Sean John clothing line. Dallas will also have a throwback uniform, which means the team will be wearing four different uniforms in the 2004-05 season.

One thing will remain constant for the Mavericks, and that's the logo, something simple and uncluttered.

"The more simple and cleaner a logo looks, the better," Henning said. "On a jersey, you like to have a clean look with simple lines. It really appeals more to customers."

The Rockets felt the same way last year when they broke out the new logo and jerseys that were designed by Academy Award-winning costume designer Eiko Ishoka, who won his Oscar in 1992 for "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Ishoka's design was honed by the Rockets, Reebok and the NBA.

Again, simplicity was the trend. The Rockets switched from a pinstriped-look that had an overwhelming logo that featured what some people have described as a "snaggle-toothed, needle-nosed cartoon rocket."

The franchise went from using blue as its dominant color back to the red that had been used before with yellow. The yellow was dropped, and the new logo has a tinge of black, silver and white.

Ishoka's intent in the logo was to show that basketball is a vertical sport, featuring sleek and strong athletes. That's why the "R" in the Rockets logo has a rocket as part of the letter, and it shows upward motion by lines being drawn to show the exhaust.

"Our goals going in were to use red because that's the color that fans think of when they think of the Rockets," said Tim McDougall, the Rockets' vice president for marketing. "The other was to have a look that would appeal over a long period."

This past season, one of the hottest-selling new NBA uniforms was the powder-blue and gold Denver Nuggets jerseys.

The Nuggets were able to find a color scheme not taken by any other NBA team. Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe simply took colors from his college team, UCLA, and lightened the blue a bit. It also helped that the Nuggets had a hot rookie, Carmelo Anthony, who helped the sell the new jerseys.

Will the Grizzlies uniform be a hot-seller nationally? That hasn't been the concern of the Griz through the process of its new logo and uniform design.

"We wanted a logo and colors that would look good on our court at FedExForum, then on our uniform," Golub said. "Something clean and something timeless."

And something that might take the Griz to a higher level. Perhaps it's coincidence, but logo changes have led to almost-immediate championships in all sports.

The San Antonio Spurs, Anaheim Angels, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos and now the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the Stanley Cup last week just a year after a logo change, are just a few of the franchises who have recently won league championships following an image makeover.

Sound far-fetched? So was thinking at this time a year ago that the Grizzlies would win 50 games in the regular season and make the playoffs for the first time in history.

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