In 2011, after franchise legend John Wall’s rookie season, the Wizards took a new direction with their jerseys, signaling an official goodbye to the Gilbert Arenas era and ushering in the era of the star point guard.
15 years later, and it is time for the same, as the Wizards will draft their future franchise star No.1 overall, who can hopefully lead them to success.
Now, if this were a storied era of Washington Wizards basketball that we just witnessed, there would be an argument in keeping the Washington/Baltimore Bullets-inspired uniforms, but the vast majority of it has been a disaster.
Despite the moderate success from the Wall and Bradley Beal era, the Wizards have just a .404 win percentage (483-711) since changing the uniforms in 2011.
These are not the Celtics or Lakers (who, funny enough, have modified their uniforms more recently than the Wizards), who have a great history in wearing the jerseys they do, so there’s very little incentive to change.
The current uniforms reek of awful and apathetic seasons; you can’t bring that into a new era.
Wizards have a blank canvas to work with
The advantage of not having as rich a history as the aforementioned Celtics, Lakers, or Bulls is that the Wizards don’t have to be beholden to the Red, White, and Navy Blue they’ve worn for the last decade plus, so this is an opportunity to go in a completely new direction if they wanted to.
This is something they’ve done before as well, when in the 1997-98 season, the then Bullets switched to the Wizards and decided not to bring the old colors with the new name, and began wearing blue, bronze, white, and black.
Take the route of teams like the Utah Jazz, who make it almost a rite of passion to change their primary colors and uniforms often.
Give whoever the top pick is their own identity with the franchise
In the same way Wizards/Bullets fans think of the Manute Bol, Juwan Howard, Rod Strickland era having a different look than the Michael Jordan, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, and Arenas era, than John Wall, Bradley Beal, and Marcin Gortat, who had their own distinct appearance, it is important to give the next group of young guys their own look.
The young core of Alex Sarr, Tre Johnson, Kyshawn George, Will Riley, and Bub Carrington, headlined by whoever is selected in the draft, deserves a new uniform free of the ugliness of the past 15 years and a style that gets both them and the Wizards faithful excited for the future.
A league-wide shift is clearly in play, so Washington may want to consider getting on board.
