NBA teams love to bring back older uniform styles for special events and nostalgic purposes. The Phoenix Suns should do the same, and bring back uni’s that have not been worn in a long time.
As the NBA gears up for the 2019-20 regular season, teams have slowly been leaking new uniform sets and special edition jerseys to be worn this year.
Within the past few days, both the Utah Jazz (their blue mountains uni) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (their black with the blue lightning bolt-thing across the torso) have made it known that they will be wearing their 90’s era throwback uniforms on occasion this year, two of the most notable throwbacks in NBA history.
The Phoenix Suns have worn throwback uniforms plenty of times over the past fifteen years, however, while the majority of them have been the original or southwestern uniforms originally worn from 1968-1992, they have also worn their black alternate fireball uniforms worn from 1993-99.
While they have not yet done a throwback night from the Nash-era Suns (the uniforms with the little basketball hoop-type halo around the front number and the solid color stripe down the sides), they too have never “thrown back” to the 90’s white or purple uniforms that were the primary home and away jerseys from 1992-99.
While the black fireball are one of the most favorite uniforms the franchise has ever worn, the white and purple uniforms are too very impressive, and have been shelved long enough requiring at least one of them to return for some special nights in 2019-20.
(Only the black uniforms were ever available for use on NBA2K until this past year’s incarnation in which both the white and purple were finally added for the first time in many years).
While white too is part of every team’s uniform closet and thus by far the most common uniform shades in the league, black is also one of the most popular shades as either a primary base allowing other team colors to pop from the fabric, or as a secondary shade that accents the rest (see the Cavaliers’ throwback and the Jazz’s alternate from the purple mountains era set).
However, Phoenix’s purple is truly unique, and as one of the primary colors, it is now really only found in the Suns’, Lakers’, and Kings’ pallets regularly, making it a color that is much more rarely seen.
Thus, the purple fireball uniform should be the jersey that the Phoenix Suns bring back for throw back nights, wearing it for the first time since (unless there was a throwback night at some point in the last 19 years that I am forgetting) May of 1999.
The Phoenix fireball uniform set is regularly considered by fans to be the best set the franchise has ever worn, and in the era of teams’ apparently bringing back styles from the 1990s that have not been warn in many years, the Suns should follow suit and wear their purple’s for the first time in twenty years.