Houston Rockets: New uniforms are chic but more could’ve been done

The Houston Rockets announced the redesign of the team uniforms, they are chic but more could’ve been done. What gives? Let’s take a look.

Houston Rockets fans — the day has arrived and the team finally has let us know that they’ve re-designed the uniforms.  I imagine that something like this has been in the works for quite some time and it was badly needed.

There hasn’t been a uniform style change since 2003 when the Houston Rockets moved into their then-new digs at Toyota Center downtown, moving out of the outmoded The Summit/Compaq Center in Greenway Plaza, their home since 1975.

That along with the uniforms, I had — and continue to do so — some terrific memories of my Houston Rockets in both buildings and I think these newly-styled uniforms are going to put them over the top once again of being cutting-edge in terms of their design.

They’re not perfect but they’re pretty damn close as to what a Houston Rockets uniform should look like in this day of age.  There were no changes to the primary logo — it’s great as it is — and these changes follow the Houston Astros, who instituted a change back in 2013 after 13 seasons donning the brick red and pinstripes.  The Astros also made a uni change when Minute Maid Park opened back in 2000.

So enough of the flattery — here’s what they will look like:

https://twitter.com/HoustonRockets/status/1141868662997037056

They’ve changed the font of the lettering, making it a bit more bold to which I’m all aboard for.  They’re also bringing back the throwback ketchup and mustard uniforms that this team has heralded for most of its existence.

Remember the pajama-themed blue-striped jerseys of the late 90s and early 2000s?  I embraced them and I still have a Hakeem Olajuwon and Robert Horry jersey somewhere in a box but they got old quickly.  They remind me too much of such a mediocre era of Houston Rockets‘ history, I’m glad they’re gone for good.  At the time of their release, I was just 15-years-old but wondered as to why a uniform change was necessitated.  I was happy with the ketchup and mustard and always will be.

It’s just good to know that they will now be part of the rotation once again.

The black alternate unis — to which I’m sure they’re a best-seller — will return but the sleeved

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gray unis with the checkered sides and red lettering — one of my favorites — has been officially retired.

Those four designs that you see up in the tweet are going to be their primary go-to but I’m sure you’ll see special renditions as they did with Hispanic Heritage Month and the Lunar New Year.

Here’s the deal — I like them but the problem is that they should’ve put “Houston” on the front of the red road jerseys as it looks so much better when they’re wearing the dark-colored jerseys on the road.

I’d imagine that the powers that be thought about this but because sometimes teams have to break away from the convention if one wants to wear a certain design, it wouldn’t matter and they felt that “Rockets” on both jerseys would do just fine.  Houston is an important part of the team name but the Rockets is what separates things from the rest.  For their marketing gurus, that’s what matters.

By the way, I don’t like the new secondary logo at all, it looks cheap, way too busy and that’s not something I want to associate with a franchise that has such storied history in professional basketball.  Simple, sleek, elegant and hard-hitting is all you need with a logo and this one is just not it.

In case you haven’t seen it already, here it is:

See what I mean?  The older one did at least hit the points that I mentioned.

But let’s move the conversation further, Conrad Burry, a talented graphic design artist that has done work for Nike, tweeted out last year a concept that he’d been working on.

It’s safe to say that his mock-up was right on the money and I would’ve loved a yellow-lettered version:

https://twitter.com/conradburry/status/998346517235879936

Regardless, this man shouldn’t be a free agent and I think somebody should hire him as soon as possible!  I also love his rendition of the secondary logo in the bottom-right corner.  That’s where the team should’ve gone with their creativity in terms of that logo.

As I said, it’s sleek and fits nicely on a Polo shirt — to which I wear the majority of the time when representing my teams — and that discombobulation of a logo the Rockets released a few weeks back looks way too bulky to fit on a shirt.

Anyway — to each his own.

I’m thrilled and can’t wait to see the team in their new threads at the start of the 2019-20 season.

Here we go — let’s go Houston Rockets!