An in depth look at the new Suns jerseys

As we all know, NBA teams have slowly been trickling through jersey releases. Today, we saw our Phoenix Suns drop some fresh threads.

Before we get into some really deep, educated fashion analysis (read: sarcasm), why don’t we look at a brief history of the basketball jersey?

In the late nineteenth century, when the game was starting out, basketball players would play in just about anything: overalls, pants, trousers, long, woolen underwear…you get the idea.

Moving forward to the early 1900’s, teams started to move away from mismatched apparel towards uniformity. Squads started outfitting themselves in woolen shirts and long shorts.

By the mid 1930’s, players were fed up with the wool tops (understandably so…I imagine that balling in wool would be somewhat akin to draping a blanket of nails on top of your torso) and the long shorts. This necessitated a move to slightly shorter shorts and a lighter, more comfortable nylon/polyester top, similar to what we have today.

Next, we move into the era I like to call the “short-shorts nightmare“. From the 1940’s to the early 1980’s, mankind experience one of the most frightening fashion trends in modern history: the short-shorts. Personally, I’d prefer to skip past this time in basketball jersey history as quickly as possible.

As sense slowly crept back into the minds of basketball players everywhere, so did longer shorts. Through the mid 1980’s and the 1990’s, shorts and tops elongated. At a certain point in the ’90’s, people got a little too carried away with the length, perhaps scared that they would once again fall back into the short-short death trap of earlier years.

Fortunately, we have now managed to find proper, acceptable lengths for both shorts and tops. Today, modern athletic shorts hover right at or slightly above the knee and jersey tops are no longer baggy or ill-fitting like in recent decades.

We have finally reached basketball jersey nirvana.

So, how are people feeling about these new Suns jerseys? Reactions to the release have been mostly positive. Now that we are all better educated in regards to basketball’s jersey history, we can afford to take a more in-depth look at the Suns’ new threads. Let’s get right into it.