When fans began campaigning for the Charlotte Bobcats to be renamed as the Charlotte Hornets a few years ago, their rallying cry was "Bring back the buzz," and Charlotte soon became known as Buzz City.
Now that nickname will be featured on the Hornets' latest alternate uniform, which was unveiled Thursday night.
The Buzz City alternate features black base color with teal and white typography. It has sleeves like all of the NBA's "pride" uniforms, though Hornets marketing executive Seth Bennett said the uniform's basic design could be maintained "with other silhouettes," which suggests that the team might change the jersey to a standard tank top at some point down the road. There's widespread speculation that the league will move away from sleeved jerseys when Nike replaces Adidas as the league's uniform outfitter for the 2017-18 season.
Bennett said the new uniform will be worn for six home games in 2015-16 -- the maximum allowable number for "pride" designs -- but it probably won't make its on-court debut until the jersey becomes available for retail sale in November.
As for the design, it's a good one. True, black hasn't been a Hornets color until now, so this uniform fits into the BFBS trend (that's "black for black's sake"), but the teal and white elements work surprisingly well on the black background, the "Buzz City" chest mark look sharp, and the uniform meshes well with the rest of the team's wardrobe. Too bad about the sleeves, but hopefully that's just a temporary element. Grade: A-
Paul Lukas thinks the Hornets should play the old Urinals song "I'm a Bug," which features the repeated line "buzz, buzz," whenever they wear the Buzz City uniform, but he isn't holding his breath on that one. If you liked this column, you'll probably like his Uni Watch blog, plus you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Want to learn about his Uni Watch membership program or his Uni Watch T-Shirt Club, be added to his mailing list so you'll always know when a new column has been posted, or just ask him a question? Contact him here.