If there’s one advantage the Pelicans have over every team in the NBA, besides Anthony Davis, it’s being based in a location with an incredible culture. New Orleans is the coolest city in America without question. Everybody should visit at least once in their life to appreciate the majesty that is that wonderful city. Just a nice walk down the street will engross anyone into the music, food, and artistry that is proudly displayed throughout the city. It’s a magnificent place. It also has incredible Mardi Gras parties.
New Orleans is famous for Mardi Gras and teams like the Pelicans try to embrace that with mascots such as King Cake Baby and a colorful branding style. They’ve also sparingly used Mardi Gras style jerseys throughout the franchise’s existence. These are always the best because in a day and age where teams want to use gray/black for the sake of having a gray/black jersey there’s always New Orleans ready to add some color to our lives.
Jake Madison of the Locked On Pelicans podcast tweeted out a leaked image of this season’s Mardi Gras jerseys and honestly, they are perfect.
https://twitter.com/NOLAJake/status/1056888381416894465/photo/1
I’ll get the few negatives out of the way quickly. I wish they had gone a little crazier with the design as opposed to a white jersey with plain striping, but that’s a personal thing. I want Mardi Gras jerseys to be weird and almost grotesque in how in your face they are. These though go the opposite direction and use multicolored striping across the top with a plain white throughout the rest. The purple, yellow, and green color scheme is also used as a trimming on the collar which is a nice touch.
It’s the subtlety in design that makes these perfect. They take a very boring concept, plain white, and use the loud colors to pop out. The stripes aren’t too big or too small so it doesn’t look weird and they made sure to not come off like some kind of weird popsicle stick by overwhelming the top of the jersey. If you’re going to create a Mardi Gras jersey that’s intended to look good and stylish as opposed to loud and obnoxious then this is the way to go about it.
We still haven’t seen the shorts yet but I’m going to assume that for the most part they’re plain white with maybe some color striping on the sides. If they want to get really weird though, and I kind of hope they do, then the designers could copy that striping pattern and throw them on the shorts too. Although that feels unlikely, because teams typically don’t try to match the design scheme on the jersey and shorts in that way. They should compliment each other as opposed to full-on match.
