OKLAHOMA CITY — The sports apparel shop where Colby Ousley works was one of the first places to get new NBA T-shirts featuring Oklahoma City on the front.
There’s still a big question on the minds of Ousley and others who are eager for the NBA to make its official arrival in the city, though.
“I’m anxious to know what they’re finally going to be. The colors, nobody knows anything about that,” said Ousley, a 19-year-old who’s studying athletic training at the University of Central Oklahoma.
A single rack of black T-shirts featuring the white logo from the team’s summer league jerseys and the word Oklahoma City was set up next to the cash register Wednesday at the Hibbett Sports store in the Quail Springs Mall in northern Oklahoma City. Each one was on sale for $22.
But two weeks after owner Clay Bennett announced that he would be moving the Seattle SuperSonics to his hometown, with an entirely new name and look, there could still be a long wait before that new identity gets unveiled.
“I think the team probably has a plan of how they want this to roll out accordingly, and we’ll certainly do whatever they want us to do,” Christopher Arena, the NBA’s vice president of apparel, sporting goods and basketball partnerships, said this week.
“Knowing the timelines that we’re under, I could envision us launching the name first, just because maybe we want to start selling tickets or maybe there are some marketing vehicles that require the name first, and then the logo sometime thereafter, and then the uniform last.”
The NBA expects that parts of Oklahoma City’s new identity might be announced next month, but the final deadline will be late September — shortly before the start of preseason games.
The actual names under consideration aren’t being revealed, but Bennett has said there are several names being cleared through the league and that the team took in recommendations through letters, naming competitions at schools and a contest run by the local newspaper.
“We’ve got lots and lots of names, so we feel like we have absorbed much of the flavor of what the citizens have considered and have certainly put that into the equation,” Bennett said.
Arena said Bennett provided “emotion-evoking words” that will be used by the NBA’s marketing department, creative services group and global merchandising group to formulate a team name. There also are some hurdles with double-checking copyrights and other legal issues.
“He used words that would allow the designer to go down a path that I think will get us there faster,” Arena said. “Certainly, once we have the name and you put the name with the emotions and the feelings and these competitive nature types of ideals that he wants to instill in this team.”
The process for overhauling a team’s logo and colors usually takes 22 months. Arena said teams would need to submit proposals by January for changes that would be made for the season that begins in fall of the following year.
Several months would be spent on designing a logo, then a few more on a uniform design and finally a long stretch of working with retailers who’d be interested in carrying the items.
“I think it’s all just accelerated. There’s nothing that’s going to be compromised,” Arena said.
The shirts with the practice wear graphic are only the first step in the merchandising plan. Caps, imprinted basketballs and replica jerseys will eventually become part of the mix.
But while there’s been much talk about the team’s relocation to Oklahoma City, the rack of T-shirts went untouched for an hour on a slow weekday morning at Hibbett Sports. That could change once there’s something more for Ousley and other fans to get excited about.
“If we can allow the fans to embrace us by showcasing here’s the name and in a few weeks we launch the logo and the colors and then a few weeks after that the uniform, that may be the best direction,” Arena said. “But we’ll talk to the team, and we’ll strategize accordingly.”
The NBA certainly doesn’t want to find itself redesigning the team’s logo, colors or identity in the near future.
“We want to make something that’s timeless and has some meaning for a long, long time so we aren’t going to rush that process just to hit a timeline that we may put on a piece of paper,” Arena said. “We want to get things out there as soon as possible, but we want to do it right.”
So for a little while longer, the name will remain classified.
“Certainly, we’d love a unique name but we want our name to be in indigenous to the area,” Arena said. “We want it to hopefully have some meaning to the fans in that area and around the world.”
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