Getty Vince Carter of the New Jersey Nets looks on against the New Orleans Hornets on January 21, 2009 at the New Orleans Arena in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Brooklyn Nets have rolled out several new-look uniforms in recent years. For the most part, they’ve all been hits.
The team’s Biggie uniform, which had “BED-STUY” strewn across the front, honored the late hip-hop legend Biggie Smalls, a native of the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. The Nets’ Basquiat uniform paid a colorful homage to revolutionary Brooklyn-born artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. And their Subway uniform, debuted earlier this season, is a nod to the New York subway system, complete with a black-and-white color theme.
The team’s newest design looks like it’ll be paying tribute to a part of the franchise’s history — this time a nod to roots across the river.
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New Uniform, New Jersey Flair
Images of several new 2021-22 NBA uniforms leaked Friday morning on Twitter thanks to user @skunwong32. Sportslogos.net then confirmed the leaked images as being credible.
Among the leaked images: A new Brooklyn Nets uniform that has a distinct New Jersey feel.
The franchise played as the New Jersey Nets from 1977 to 2012, and a first glimpse at next year’s new City Edition uniform reveals a design that indeed is a throwback-inspired nod to the franchise’s time in the Garden State.
LEAKED: 2022 Brooklyn Nets ‘City Edition’ jersey: (via @sportslogosnet)
As Chris Creamer of sportslogos.net notes, “the Nets uniform reminds us of a trio of older New Jersey Nets designs, with a single red stripe down just one side of the jersey (like in the 80s), the updated 1990s wordmark, and in the early 2000s colours.”
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Nets Aiming to Make Noise in Postseason
All of that is exciting news for next season. For now, the Nets have plenty of reason to be excited about this postseason.
Brooklyn begins its quest for a championship run at 8 p.m. Saturday when it hosts the Boston Celtics at Barclays Center in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series. The second-seeded Nets went 48-24 in the regular season to set a franchise record for winning percentage. And with a Big Three of Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and James Harden, Brooklyn is the odds-on favorite to win the title, according to sportsbooks around the country.
Nets coach Steve Nash says his team is fully embracing that pressure.
“Yeah, for me, basketball, sports — professional sports, but any level — is about pressure,” Nash said recently, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post. “It’s about playing with pressure, embracing pressure, enjoying pressure,” coach Steve Nash said. “That’s why I want you to be excited for the playoffs, because you have pressure. There’s real consequences. That’s what makes it fun. That’s why you put in the extra reps. Some people deal with it better than others, but the idea is this is what we all do this for: To face pressure and to do it when it really counts.
“It’s nice to do in the regular season. It’s nice in pressure moments in the regular season to succeed, but the most rewarding and the biggest challenge is doing it in the playoffs when it really matters. That’s the carrot, the bonus of playing in the playoffs, is that you get to face that pressure and get to try to overcome it. That’s exciting. That’s what our group is excited for and, and is looking forward to.”
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