The Utah Jazz’s primary goal with their new jerseys was the erasure of an error.
The uniforms of recent years — black, white, and especially yellow — were widely panned, both locally and nationally. My biggest complaint, other than the brightness of the jerseys, was that they just had nothing to do with the idea of the Utah Jazz the state had developed over decades. They looked like generic, video game Create-A-Team unis. That the basketball players who played in them were largely anonymous too didn’t help.
So the Jazz’s decision to move back to purple mountains was a welcome one.
Look, too often, we live in a world that doubles down on its mistakes. There are certainly organizations out there, leaders out there, that would have responded to the negative reaction by insisting that those bright yellow jerseys were good and digging in on their position. It could have dragged down the Jazz’s look for decades.
Instead, the Jazz slow-rolled the release of the yellow two years ago, and are getting out of their mistake as soon as humanly possible under the restrictions provided under the Nike deal.
It’s to be lauded.
Jazz brand director Ben Barnes called this “Mountain Basketball” look a revisiting, not a rebranding — and while some of that line is to save the franchise blushes from two rebrands in the past two years, there is no doubt that these mountains are comfort food for Utahns. This is familiar territory: white and purple primary uniforms, black alternates, and of course, the remarkable Utah mountains plastered across the front. It is meant to evoke both our home state and the John Stockton and Karl Malone years, and succeeds at both.
(Utah Jazz) From left, Jazz players Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks and Walker Kessler wear four new Jazz jerseys that will debut starting in the 2024-2025 season.
The mountains are a topic essentially every Utahn can agree on. Their protection led Brigham Young to settle this valley. Their riches, geologic and ecologic, have led millions of non-believers to come here before and since. Even former Jazz center-turned-villain Enes Kanter, when asked if there was anything he still liked about Utah upon being traded from the club, had just one answer: “The mountains.”
But it’s not just Utah’s peaks that make these uniforms sing. There’s more to like about the new look:
• The gradient-infusion in the 2025-26 uniforms work really well, especially on the white background. It’s a clever nod to another successful bit of previous Jazz branding, the team’s red-rock-themed jerseys that debuted in 2017, in a melding of two smart design ideas the Jazz can lean on moving forward.
• The black “Statement” jersey, which will see its debut in January, is a similar bit of smart fusion. The Jazz have gone back to the small numbers under the Jazz note concept, used in innumerable colors over the past few years. But we haven’t seen that look in black before, and we also haven’t seen it with a mountain backdrop — a creative way to spice up what could have otherwise been a bland design.
• The minimal, non-distracting addition of “sky blue” to the Jazz’s color palette. Yellow screamed at you, but this blue is simply designed to look good next to purple and black. Integrating it into the jersey’s shoulder piping and at the tops and bottoms of the shorts adds substance and complexity, in sharp contrast to the Jazz’s monochrome uniforms of a year ago.
And the faux pas are minor, in my opinion:
• Three of the four jerseys read “Utah” on the front, while none read “Jazz.” I tend to think that the Jazz wordmark is stronger than the Utah one — the double Zs, goofy as they are, do provide some visual flair and a more natural shrinking of letter height as the word moves vertically upwards. The team explained that they wanted to tie together Utah’s mountains with the state itself, which makes some sense, but the word Jazz would have been welcome on at least one of these looks.
• The two primarily purple uniforms do look pretty similar. This isn’t as big of a problem as you might think at first glance, as the pair will actually never be worn in the same season — the gradient mountain ones won’t debut until the 2025-26 season, while the standard mountain ones will only be worn in 2024-25. But announced all at once now, it’s a bit duplicative.
• The 2024-25 “transition” year provides a hodge-podge of looks, with both old and new jerseys being worn. Nike and its restrictive production schedule that relies on overseas, unethical manufacturing processes is to blame here, though, not the Jazz.
These aren’t the best jerseys I’ve ever seen. My reaction upon seeing them for the first time wasn’t an astonished, elated “Wow!” but a sense of comforted relief. A sense that the franchise has returned to an identity that served them well for decades, and should continue to do so.
Most importantly, it’s a sign that the team is back to listening to its fanbase, its customers. You.
May it continue at all levels throughout the franchise — not just with the laundry.
