Philadelphia 76ers Reveal New Team Logos and Uniforms

Rebranding is a tricky, thankless undertaking for sports franchises.

If you do a good job, people on the Internet will complain and mock you. If you do a bad job, all of the people on the Internet will complain and mock you roundly.

So it comes as a bit of a relief for me to say that the Philadelphia 76ers have redesigned their logos, and there's really not much to complain about.

Update from Thursday, June 18

After unveiling new logos last month (see below), the 76ers have now unveiled new uniforms.

[Philadelphia 76ers]

--End of Update--

The team tweeted out a slate of the new logo mockups. Admirably, it forwent musical festival neons and stuck to sprucing up the classic design already in place. 

The basketball emblem is now encircled with a blue band featuring stars and the word "Philadelphia." The ball itself does look a bit more like the Brooklyn Nets' logo. 

The franchise is also going through with the dribbling Ben Franklin secondary logo that first surfaced in 2014. It's a little goofy, but I commend Philadelphia for faithfully depicting Franklin's significant handles. Dude could cook.

@Sixers

Additionally, the team noted on its website that it will introduce its newly redesigned jersey on June 18.

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The Philadelphia 76ers today unveiled an updated brand identity, which includes a redesigned primary logo and a series of partial and secondary logo variations in advance of the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday, May 19 and the introduction of new uniforms on Thursday, June 18.

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The best part of the 76ers' logo announcement is what wasn't included—notably, a lack of buzzy marketing jargon in Philadelphia's official release. The team posted a simple explanation saying the new designs are just "visually updated" versions of the classic logos. No sizzling verbiage, no TED Talk garbage about how this line going through that circle acts as a unifying force and empowers the people of Philadelphia with the might of 1,000 rum hams.

They wanted to spruce things up, so they did. You don't need to hire a platoon of Macklebearded millennials to explain it.

Dan is on Twitter. He'd like the 76ers to consult with Joel Embiid for the next design.