Ranking the Best and Worst Uniforms in Brooklyn Nets History

From New York to New Jersey to Brooklyn, the Nets franchise has had a rather bumpy journey.

There have certainly been some glistening bright spots. Julius Erving won two ABA championships with the New York Nets in 1974 and 1976. Jason Kidd took the New Jersey Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003.

But other than that, it's been mostly 808s & Heartbreak for fans. To this day, the Nets have yet to raise an NBA championship banner.

Since the Nets’ conception back in 1967, a lot has changed. The players, coaches, stadiums and even the team’s homes have been switched around.

Our focus here, however, is the uniforms.

On the following slides, you’ll get to take a look at the best and worst Nets unis through the years. Like the team's basketball history, there are definitely some duds.

But there are also some absolute classics.

3. Worst: 2014 Home Alternates

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Look at Joe Johnson’s face.

That stare of disappointment says all you need to know about these jerseys. Johnson looks like a kid whose mom is forcing him to wear a first-day-of-school outfit that he despises.

Brooklyn donned the gray atrocities four times during the 2014 season in an effort to pay homage to the pride of the borough, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

And while that’s a really cool idea, these fell flat.

For a significantly more aesthetically pleasing take on the idea, check out what Mike King, a graphic designer who works with the Brooklyn Game and RealGM, whipped up here.

2. Worst: 2014 Christmas Jerseys

Christopher Pasatieri/Getty Images

Come on, everyone—all together now: “Booooooo!”

The Nets broke these black eyesores out during a Christmas beatdown at the hands of the Chicago Bulls last season.

Here’s an excerpt on the sleeved jerseys from Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal in November 2013:

"

Early reviews suggest fans are skeptical of the new look. Photos of the Christmas Day sleeved jerseys leaked online last week and several sports media outlets weighed in. ‘NBA reveals weird, pajama-looking sleeved Christmas Day jerseys,’ read a headline on SBNation.com. A poll on ESPN.com asked people what they thought of the sleeves. Of the more than 9,700 respondents, 52% chose, ‘Don't Like It.’

"

The sleeved look is rather peculiar, but the NBA seems to have its heart set on making this thing catch on.

The gimmicky kind of jersey pictured above would probably look great on an infant. But on the enormous man-beasts that populate NBA courts? Not so much.

Adidas and the NBA appear to have stepped their game up, though. Check out what this season’s Christmas uniforms will look like courtesy of Uni Watch.

Spoiler alert: They’re 10 times better.

1. Worst: 2014 Home Uniforms

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Remember when Jay Z was a partial “owner” of the Nets? That was fun.

But the jerseys that the rap superstar helped design when the team moved to Brooklyn are, well, boring.

The jet black away jerseys are sort of catchy—not many teams step on the court completely decked out in black. But the white home jerseys are as plain as can be.

There’s a certain simplicity that’s slightly appealing about Brooklyn’s 2013-14 threads. But they’re just too bland.

Tom O’Grady, president and CEO of marketing company Gameplan Creative, played a crucial role in the Nets’ look from 1997 until the team's ownership changed in 2009.

Per SportsJourney.com, O’Grady believed that the franchise allowed "hip-hop culture to get in the way of the ‘tribal’ color of sports."

“Brooklyn is a colorful dynamic city,” O’Grady tweeted in 2012. “… To “RAP” it in dull black and white is really a statement of how out of touch JayZ is.” O'Grady has since made his account private.

Say what you will, but according to Forbes, Brooklyn ranked No. 7 in NBA team merchandise sales in 2014.

3. Best: 1997-2009 Road Uniforms

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Kidd took the Nets to back-to-back Finals in 2002 and 2003. But after that, the Nets proved incapable of escaping the shackles of mediocrity.

The team brought in a walking—er, flying—highlight show in Vince Carter midway through the 2004 season, which significantly boosted the Nets’ status among fans.

However, to this day, the team has failed to reach the conference finals since 2003.

Before moving to Brooklyn, New Jersey had gone five straight years with a sub-.500 record, including an absolutely painful 12-70 showing in 2009-2010.

Throughout all that, the Nets still managed to look pretty good.

The away jerseys pictured above aren’t the most glamorous or dazzling, but they’re different. No other team consistently wore navy, which gave New Jersey a very distinct look.

And that’s respectable.

As for the white ones, they were OK—nothing too special, but still diverse based on the color scheme. The Nets maintained the whites before moving to Brooklyn but discontinued the navy for an all-red look from 2009 to 2012.

2. Best: 1991-1997 Road Uniforms

Dick Raphael/Getty Images

Drazen Petrovic grew from a virtual no-name bench player to an international star with the Nets between 1991 and 1993.

During that two-and-a-half-year span, the Croatian guard went from scoring 4.4 points a night with the Portland Trail Blazers in early 1990 to averaging 22.3 with the Nets in 1993.

Petrovic helped lead the Nets, who had gone without a postseason berth for five years prior to his arrival, get to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.

In less than three years, Petrovic helped make the Nets a playoff team while also cementing the short-lived uniforms pictured above as one of the team's all-time best.

The sweet-shooting guard’s life was tragically cut short in the summer of 1993. Petrovic died in a car accident on June 7, 1993.

Petrovic’s jersey hangs in the rafters of Barclays Center as one of the franchise’s seven retired numbers. Brooklyn’s newest shooting guard, Bojan Bogdanovic, who also hails from Croatia, is honored to represent the Nets and his country.

"Just the fact that his jersey still hangs in the training center of the Nets, there is a trace of him left," Bogdanovic said of Petrovic, per Nets Daily. "I do not think I'm close to him [in talent] or that I can play like him, but that's my motivation as I come into his club, that you can wear a jersey that he wore ... I think it is a dream come true."

New Jersey rocked these extremely sharp uniforms from 1991 to 1997. The team also wore a really funky, shinier version of the uniform in 1990.

1. Best : 1977-1990 Home and Away Uniforms

Maybe it’s just my affinity for throwback NBA stuff, but to me, these jerseys are legendary.

Though I wouldn’t particularly enjoy seeing Brook Lopez trotting around in those short-shorts, the entire star-spangled ensemble is so sleek that just about any Nets player could pull it off.

The Nets rocked the white unis back in their ABA days and donned a similar blue template for road contests. The team kept the getup from 1977 to 1990 after merging into the NBA.

Dr. J, one of seven Nets whose jerseys have been retired, helped make these uniforms iconic.

According to Paul Lukas of Uni Watch, the Nets may pay homage to the classic uniform this season:

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I recently heard from a credible source who told me that the Nets have developed a new jersey that’s a lot like their classic Dr. J-era look, but rendered in their current black-and-white color scheme and with their current font. The source created a mock-up to show roughly what it looks like...

"

It’d be awesome to see the modern-day Nets don a throwback or alternate jersey based on the team’s first—and by far greatest—uniform.

Information from SportsLogos.net and Uni-Watch.com was used in this article. All stats are courtesy of Basketball Reference.