The Miami Heat makeover

Travis Nicholson
September 23, 2011

Even without taking into consideration their players or basketball prowess, the Miami Heat should be the hottest franchise in professional basketball.

By most measures, they are; they’ve got the biggest superstar in the game, a championship caliber shooting guard, the best third option in the league and a bench deep enough to bring them to the NBA Finals.

But, despite the talent-ridden personnel, the most exciting and star-studded team in the NBA has been schlepping around in some of the ugliest uniforms in the association. Considering the amazing art and style identity for which South Beach is internationally known, this is a shame.

When operating an NBA franchise, team branding and identity is far lower on the list of things to be considered than, say, managing contracts and draft picks, but the winningest teams, quite often tend to have identities that perfectly convey the culture of their team and the city their fans call home: the timeless winning tradition and Irish heritage of the Celtics clad in kelly green, the silver belt-buckle-like simplicity of the Spurs’ in monochrome, and the purple and gold sheen of the Lakers has made people forget for decades that there really are no lakes in California.

Then again, so many other NBA teams struggle with visually portraying their identity because their identities themselves have zero connection to the local history or culture of the city in which they play thanks to relocation (the New Orleans Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies and Utah Jazz specifically). Other teams yet, are left with popular but unsubstantial fierce animals that don’t lend themselves well to jersey design (think Raptors or Bobcats).

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The Miami Heat are missing a great opportunity to achieve what the Grizzlies and Bobcats will always have a near impossibility doing: creating a visual link between their team’s identity and their home.

I get that there’s a certain form of intimidation established when beating another team while wearing hideous uniforms – like how losing to the (terrible) Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the mid-90s must have been infinitely harder when they were wearing their creamsicle uniforms. (Like being dismantled by the 60s Celtics or questioned by the Secret Service, there’s something infinitely more intimidating about men with the extra confidence gained from the strength of their uniform.)

Just over a year ago, when LeBron James took to primetime TV to announce his Decision to become a member of the Heat, he was, let’s not forget, “taking his talents to South Beach“. Over the course of the past season, the now infamous line took on new life and as a result has become another way of referencing Miami that wasn’t previously associated with the team in any way. If James had said that he was “taking his talents to Miami”, it just wouldn’t have had been as devastating a twist of the dagger in Cavaliers fan’s hearts.

In his decision to call the city “South Beach” and not “Miami,” we’re given some insight as to why a multi-millionaire 25-year-old professional athlete left the cold shores of Lake Erie for the hot sand of South Florida. Upon mention of the beach or the city, images of bikini-clad girls drinking mojitos spring to mind, as well as art deco hotels on palm-tree lined streets, surrounded by attractive and tanned people cracking shellfish on picnic tables or drinking on catamarans with expensive sunglasses and toy dogs.

Dwyane Wade and LeBron James have definitely found time to take on the sophisticated fashion sense of sunny South Beach. Playing older brother, the Metropolitan-looking Wade seemed to have given James fashion advice before he even left Cleveland. Upon getting to South Beach, James immediately started dressing like a grown-up, somehow successfully meshing the image of a Venician gondolier with that of an A-list Hollywood bodyguard. Chris Bosh, ever the aesthetete, has spent a tenuous off-season beside the runway at New York Fashion Week looking not so bad himself (and way better than Carmelo Anthony, who attended the same show in a hoodie).

On Tuesday, an image of the newly-named Miami Marlins logo leaked online. The stylized M and hot orange, blue and yellow are more of a nod to the hotels on South Beach than they are the state of Florida in general. Similarly, Nike has been busy, heavy on the neon pinks and hot blues in their recent Nike LeBron 8 V2 Low “Miami Night” and the stunning Jordan Fly Wade.

In the NBA, the Pacers, 76ers and Pistons are all teams with a team identity explicitly linked to their home city, and all these teams have made some questionable choices along the way, often coinciding with the downturn of the franchise. Recently most have wisely leaned towards more conservative options and back to tradition in light of past design failures. The Orlando Magic, born in the loudest combination of stars and pinstripes, began reigning in the crazy while sharpening the team’s image in their teenage years. What the Heat should do, though, is the exact opposite.

Whether you’ve gone to graduate school for design or play Pictionary, you’ll realize that with a name like “Heat” you either have to go literal or dive into the abstract. The current logo is too conservative, too literal. They are a basketball team and the ball is on fire – we get it.

But going in the other direction artistically, will your average mid-20s male basketball fan buy a pink and yellow Art Deco-inspired jersey? With period-inspired typography and a slight inflection of 1920s modernism?

Well, no. But that’s not the point.

The Heat are a visually boring team now, just as they have always been. It’s easy to wince at past Atlanta Hawks and Denver Nuggets jerseys, but old Heat uniforms elicit no emotion whatsoever. Born in 1988, well after the golden years of the ABA’s bright jerseys, the franchise’s identity has been constrained and constant.

Typographically bold and basic, the Heat have always been clad in a variation of red or orange, with black and white where necessary. The burning flame on the ‘T’ and flaming hoop are the only constants – both are exceedingly forgotten, obvious and literal.

In adding James and Bosh, last year the Miami Heat became the premiere professional team in the state. They’re far more nationally-appreciated than the Magic, and with The U and four NFL teams dividing football allegiances and two MLB teams churning along virtually unnoticed, this isn’t likely to change. A hot new team deserves a hot new identity, especially if the Heat are poised to make a jump into the top tier of the NBA’s elite.

The focus shouldn’t be on a fresh new jersey just for the sake of it, but rather an identity that inspires the feeling that the team is a genuine part of the city. In some abstract way it should demonstrate a culture of achievement while paying respects to the hometown that fills the stadium. If the Miami Heat want to become an organization on par with the Celtics and Lakers, a team philosophy must be expressed from top to bottom. And that includes jersey design, and silly things like logos and typography.

Regardless of any changes, there are fans that are going to buy the jersey solely for the name and number on the back and some for the name on the front of the jersey, whether it’s purple and teal, or yellow-brown and puke-green. Considering that LeBron James’ No. 6 Heat jersey was the highest-selling jersey in the NBA last year, branding and image is even more important for the Heat, and its unlikely they’d take any major steps in the opposite direction of where they are headed with their current red, white and black design.

Usually, sports teams need to look to their past when building their identity into the future. Lately the typical path of teams has been to reign in the awful logos and concepts they developed in the late 80s and 90s – including the Buffalo Sabres who from 2006 to 2010 gradually embraced their classic “buffalo and sabre” logo and blue/yellow scheme from the 70s, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who ditched the dayglo and went on to win the Super Bowl.

John Elway finally won once the Broncos ditched the cartoonish colors of the 80s and 90s, and in 2000 the New England Patriots perfectly timed their new, modern look with the arrival of Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and three Super Bowls. The Washington Capitals, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks, Pittsburgh Penguins and Golden State Warriors have also nicely gotten their teams in line.

For a quarter century, the Miami Heat have had the least remarkable jerseys in the entire NBA. Never the worst and far from the best. For a team born smack-dab in the most offensive era of sports team design – now an accomplished champion trying to once again mature into championship form – this represents a chance for a premiere franchise to heed advice from their star players and start dressing like grown-ups.

For such a terribly fashionable city, the Miami Heat need to step out of the retirement homes of Florida and fully embrace the neon-drenched streets of South Beach.

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The Author:

Travis Nicholson

Travis Nicholson is a writer and graphic designer who started writing online in the 90s amidst a haze of bad haircuts and NBA Jam on the shores of Lake Erie.