In the early 2010s, the NBA introduced special edition uniforms that teams playing on Christmas got to wear. They often featured something like holiday-themed script lettering or bright colors and, while not all hits, were mostly well received.
However, the Christmas uniforms went away when Nike took over the NBA’s uniform business, as they opted for expanding every team’s uniform set with the standard Home and Away unis, along with the Statement and City edition unis (plus some retros and others they’ve thrown in at seemingly random). Given the NBA and Nike have expanded uniform sets and every team has so many, it is a bit odd they didn’t continue making special uniforms for the 10 teams that got Christmas day games.
Among those who want the Christmas unis back is LeBron James, who was watching a clip of a Christmas moment from when he was in Cleveland and decided to wonder aloud on Twitter as to why they went away.
This was amazing!!
. I do wish we had Xmas day uniforms across the league still. Wonder why it stopped.
https://t.co/A73AF7Dnn0
— LeBron James (@KingJames) December 24, 2023
I’m not sure we need more uniforms, as the effort at creating new unis each year has led to some lackluster designs, but it is an excuse to bring back one of the best NBA commercials ever from 2013 promoting that year’s Christmas unis.
The sleeved jersey era wasn’t for everyone, but this commercial still rocks.