The Phoenix Suns have joined the league of ugly

The Phoenix Suns have announced that they will wear a PayPal logo on the top left of their uniform, joining the many other teams who have decided that making a couple extra bucks was worth tarnishing their uniforms forever.

Last season the NBA decided to begin a multi-year trial period of allowing advertising patches on their gameday uniforms.

For the 2017-18 season the Phoenix Suns thankfully  did not add a patch (although they had the Nike swoosh on the top right of the uniform as all teams did) one of only a handful of franchises that did not immediately succumb to this ugly obsession with a couple extra bucks by tarnishing the look of the franchise.

But alas, the old adage of “play for the name on the front of the uniform” is dead, and the Phoenix Suns jerseys in the 2018-19 season and beyond will forever be tarnished.

And the truth of the matter is, this is only the beginning…

Soon a second patch (or third if you include the Nike swoosh) will be added, and a third (or fourth). The patches will get bigger and the team names and logos will eventually disappear.

Franchises will add more advertising to the courts aside from the naming rights of the arena (in Europe the free throw circle even has advertising in it) and when we watch games we won’t know whether we’re cheering on the Suns, or the Phoenix- based professional basketball team brought to you exclusively by PayPal, U.S. Airways, McDonalds, Coca Cola, eHarmony, APS, Dos Equis, Trent Homes, and many, many more.

While this particular PayPal patch is small (I seem to remember the league stating that the advertising logos would match the color schemes of the uniforms and PayPal is most definitely not purple and orange), it is still an eyesore to those of us who prefer to only support, pay attention to, and advertise through apparel the logos of their favorite team and not that of a faceless company who fans have no affiliation of or loyalty to.

I am saddened. I have grown up my entire life watching North American professional sports absolutely inundated with advertising, but never on the uniforms or the playing service save for the naming rights of the arena in the NBA and adverting under the ice in the NHL.

But now, after the NBA has opened this pandora’s box to which the Phoenix Suns have finally pulled out their first share, it will never end.

Uniforms will forever be tarnished and eventually team names will give way to sponsorship names just like in the WNBA, other professional basketball clubs around the world, NASCAR, and I’m sure many, many more, all of who’s natural revenue already pales in comparison to the NBA.

The majesty of a clean and shiny playing surface too will give way to a cacophony of multi-colored advertisements forever attempting to pry away our distracted eyes for attention from the team we wish to blindly support.

I was hoping that Suns owner Robert Sarver would actually keep away from the patches and leave Phoenix’s uniforms clean.

When they didn’t enter the court with a patch during the first preseason game my hopes were high that we would make it through another season without the franchise entering into that fray.

I shouldn’t have been so naive…

Those hopes are now unfounded and the dream of a forever clean uniform is officially dead.

Uniform advertising patches isn’t innovative, revolutionary, or forward-thinking.

It is plain and simply another money grab at the expense of the fans, and the end of an era in which North American professional sports franchises in Arizona advertise only the team’s nickname on the uniform, and not that of some random overpaying corporation.

The Phoenix Suns uniforms are forever tarnished, and this is only the beginning.