Miami Heat: AUCH roundtable on the best City Edition Jerseys in the game
Rahmeaun Rahming(@boneman9000)
Miami has clearly had the best City Edition jerseys since Nike took over as the official jersey provider back in 2017. That first season, I’m not sure they knew just quite what they had in their product, but they knew SOMETHING, as they waited until after all 29 other teams released their concepts to unveil theirs.
Fresh with its own secret website that only showed a countdown until they were ready to preview, the Heat absolutely nailed the promotion of their new Vice line and the rest was history. The white ones came first, but all of the Heat Nation knew what was next.
The mostly black jersey dubbed “Vice Nights” was an instant success. I can’t lie, I watched that promo vid like 50 times on the day it dropped. The black Lamborghini, coupled with the baby blue and pink neon lights had me.
The Heat are a marketing machine. They had their players on the court in full game gear under a rain machine dribbling and handling black basketballs, backed by the vocal stylings of Phil Collins on his 1981 hit song, In The Air Tonight. That was all I needed to rush to the website and order one ASAP.
Not too many people rocked with the Sunset Vice pink jerseys, but once you’re hooked, you’re hooked, so I bought one anyway. Once you have a marketing machine like this going, you can pretty much do no evil. I bet most people don’t even remember those jerseys.
The blue gale Vice Wave jersey just hit the market and they are once again the best alternate colors in the league. I think most, if not all fans, have stopped refuting that.
Imran Ebrahim(@iebrahim81)
While some teams have faced some negative feedback with their jerseys (Cream City, really?), others have chosen to bring back throwbacks and make them anew. In reality, no one can compete with those Utah or Vancouver throwbacks, but when it comes to originality, the Miami Vice jerseys belong at the top.
As soon as the leaked previews dropped of the first jersey, pundits had already named them as the best jerseys in the league. The whites, the blacks, the pinks, and now the blues. Year after year, the marketing department keeps it coming with the heat (pun intended).
Although I’m not a Miami native, I’m quite glad they’ve stuck to this Vice theme, as opposed to going with some random mantra, in some random font, meant to grab more money on jersey sales.
Vice truly embodies the city and the minute you put on that jersey, you can feel that Miami vibe all around you. The only thing that has me wondering is what’s next? Yellow?
We’ve gotten through four colors and I do wish they’d revisit those colors during the season as opposed to sticking to the blue. But are the Miami Heat going to squeeze all the juice out of Vice or is it time for an amazing new idea that’ll have us on the team website at 11:59 PM counting down the seconds next season?