Last month, Adidas made basketball fans everywhere do a double take with a “What the what?” added for good measure, when it was announced that the Golden State Warriors would be wearing new alternate jerseys with sleeves. An act of outright blasphemy, with approval from only Darren Rovell, the jerseys were largely panned well before they even made their debut last week.
I did, however, argue that they might look kind of cool for the average fan to wear, because there’s really not much worse than a grown adult wearing a tank top in public. As our friend Trey Kerby at The Basketball Jones was able to investigate himself – because Adidas sends him free stuff, and yet my mailbox is empty – they do look all right if you get past the absurd length.
And this is important, why? Because Adidas is bringing the sleeves to the NCAA Tournament.
According to the Sporting News, eight teams that are sponsored by Adidas will be wearing special short-sleeved, camouflage-styled jerseys for the NCAA Tourney.
“We are still working on teams, but it will be a very innovative story,” [adidas vice president/global basketball Lawrence] Norman said.
No. 10-ranked Louisville has been told that it will be one of eight men’s basketball teams to wear specially designed jerseys during the postseason and that an announcement is tentatively planned for later this week. Louisville spokesperson Kenny Klein said the school has not been given specifics on the jerseys yet.
So far, thanks to the Adidas Twitter feed, we know that Louisville, Baylor, Notre Dame, UCLA and Cincinnati are getting new jerseys. We also know from additional reports that Michigan and N.C. State already said, “H to the E to the L to the L NO” on the sleeved jerseys.
But while people freak out about whether or not their school is one of the remaining three unknown teams, Adidas is Tweeting out teasers, showing only little bits of the uniforms, and people think they’re going to look just like the McDonald’s “wounded zebra” All-American uniforms.
