Might we one day seen neon green alternate uniforms for the Boston Celtics?
While the Celtics have stuck to more traditional concepts with their initial batches of alternate uniforms, Nike has pushed some unconventional looks, including some of the eye-popping neon colors that other hoops squads, particularly at the NCAA level, have embraced.
"Nike is pretty awesome, they’ve really helped teams kinda stay in line with the pillars that define them as franchises,” Celtics vice president of business development Nicole Federico said while discussing alternate jersey creation on the latest Celtics Talk Podcast. "They really push us to kinda like push those [ideas] to the edge a little bit. So they’ll provide us with different designs that are crazy outside the box, like incorporating neon colors that you see a lot of the NCAA teams wearing, to some stuff that’s a little bit more tame, more within our wheelhouse.
“Obviously, the Celtics are known for being fairly traditional with our jersey and uniform designs so we’ve tried to kinda maintain that over the years.”
For the 2018-19 season, the Celtics elected to go with a tradition-inspired city edition jersey that’s a white base with green lettering and gold trim. It’s a nod, in part, to the famed old-school Starter satin bomber jackets, with a hint of the team’s 1980s warmup jackets, like the shortsleeved version Larry Bird wore while winning the 1988 3-point contest.
Boston Celtics
The Celtics will debut their Earned Edition jerseys on Christmas Day, one reward of making the playoffs last season. The shirts, which have drawn comparison to old-school Seattle Sonics jerseys, take the City design and essentially invert the colors with a green base featuring gold lettering and white trim.
Federico said the response from both current Celtics players and fans has been almost exclusively positive for this year’s designs. While the plans for future alternates remain under lock and key, Federico said that the team could be encouraged to embrace more unconventional looks if fans were open to stepping outside traditional concepts.
Listen to the full interview on the Celtics Talk podcast here.
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