Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Expertly Trolled Fans With These New Alternate Jersey Designs

Mid-century tablecloth plaid? Check. Multi-color checkerboard? Absolutely. Temperature-activated 1980s Hypercolor? You betcha. Those are the three new alternate jersey designs Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert tweeted out Wednesday prior to an organizational event during which one of those three uniforms would supposedly be revealed.

As you might imagine, Cavs fans weren’t too psyched about them (they sparked a panoply of “what are those???” responses), and for good reason. They’re all kinds of ugly, and the Cavaliers as an organization have a fairly sordid history of trotting their poor players out onto the court sporting hideous uniform designs. But there were early signs coming out of Cleveland that this might be Gilbert’s idea of an elaborate practical joke.

And then those suspicions were quickly confirmed when, after a considerable amount of humorless social media backlash, Gilbert broke his silence and admitted that the jersey designs were, indeed, a gleefully-perpetrated gag and that the actual jerseys would be revealed at Wednesday night’s event.

Which is a shame, really, because we’re guessing that the fashionistas of today’s NBA would’ve figured out a way to make these hot. Seriously, are these any more or less gaudy than, say, something Russell Westbrook might wear to a postgame press conference?