Brooklyn Nets Reveal Bland New Logo

Is the 'B' for 'basic'? 'Black-and-white'? Haters gonna hate.

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Courtesy of Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets certainly went nostalgic with its new logo and colors. So, nostalgic, in fact, they didn’t even use color (or much flair at all, for that matter).

The New Jersey Nets of the NBA finalized their plans to move to the New York City borough of Brooklyn yesterday, a process underway for nearly a decade into the soon-to-be-completed $1 billion Barclays Center arena. With nothing much left to announce in the way of moving dates, the team unveiled its new logos and color scheme. It makes you wonder if the “B” on the front stands for “basic” instead of “Brooklyn.”

The logo features a simple “B” embedded in a basketball under the word Nets, all encased in a shield — nothing flashy. Nothing showy. Nothing with pizzazz. The look remains so minimalistic that the idea of using a BK instead of a B was axed.

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Rapper Jay-Z, a minority owner of the team, pushed for the black and white color scheme, inspired by the tiles in the Brooklyn subway system and old-school signage. The black and white mix is the NBA’s only such pairing; the league has been pushing teams to use their alternate black jerseys less and less, possibly trying to open up marketing avenues for the new Nets.

Nets CEO Brett Yormak says that Jay-Z came up with the Nets’ story, using only black and white and a minimalistic design. “It’s simple, yet timeless. We bought into it,” he says.

The logo itself, has basic fonts and little in the way of flourish. Paul Lukas, ESPN columnist likes the simple idea, although says it borders on “really, really plain.”

By not overdesigning, the logo doesn’t step into the pitfalls of modern sports logo designs, he says. But by avoiding weaknesses, it also misses out on strengths, with a generic font and a lack of a strong presence. “The whole thing feels more like an Old Navy knock-off than an NBA logo,” he writes.

The secondary logo includes the B-encased basketball, but this time inside a circle with “Brooklyn New York” around it in white lettering.

Brooklyn hasn’t housed a major sports team since the baseball Dodgers left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Next up for the Brooklyn Nets? The reveal of the Adidas game uniform. Rest assured it will have a “B” for basic.

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