Impetus: The Washington Wizards have changed their official logo, ditching the bearded wizard that has plagued the identity since 1997 and has been gradually phased out.
Halle-fuckin-lujah.
Back in the mid/late-90s, when I was a huge NBA basketball fan, I loved the Washington Bullets. They were my hometown team, and despite the fact that they more or less stunk record-wise, I still loved them. Because my parents didn’t allow me to have cable, aside from the NBA on NBC on weekends, Bullets games were the only regular exposure to watching basketball available.
I watched through the rough days of teams anchored by Tom Gugliotta and Rex Chapman, to the arrivals of Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, to hope to rekindle some of that Michigan Fab Five magic, which actually produced some halfway decent, and entertaining squads. And who could forget loveable 7’7 Gheorghe Muresan, and the perpetually stoned-looking Rod Strickland?
I endured some of the sports heartache and dramas such as the narrow-miss of the playoffs in 1995, the jubilation of the narrow-entry into the playoffs in 1996, only to be crushed when the Bullets got swept by the freight train known as the Michael Jordan Bulls. And then there was the first time in my young life where I was exposed to the ugliness of sports free agency, as the Bullets basically lost Juwan Howard to Heat, only to manage to keep him at an exorbitant contract that’s still perceived as one of the worst deals in NBA history.
It was in 1997 when the Bullets were more or less forced to change their name, due to the violent perception of the word “Bullets.” To this very day, I still contend that such was a trite and silly debate and should never have come to fruition, because inherently bullets by themselves are not violent; it’s the guns that chamber the bullets and fire them at lethal speeds that are violent. And in that regard, it’s the wielder of said guns that house said bullets that are the genuine problem. It’s not like the team was the “Washington Gunmen” or “the DC Snipers.”
Regardless, this old school logo:
Became this horrendous abomination:
I fucking hated the name “Wizards” from the get-go. Especially when it came out that one of the options was “Wolverines,” because I was really into the X-Men then, and wolverines in general were associated with being cool. Naturally, Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, the former Michigan Wolverines endorsed this, but for whatever reason, “Wizards” still won out, and it was this doofy blue and gold piece of shit that we were left with.
Fortunately for 1998, the playoff squad from the year prior was pretty much still intact, so it was still watchable. An early win against the defending champion Bulls gave fans like me hope that things were going to look up in spite of the dorky name. Naturally, they would miss the playoffs by one game, and after 1998 came the crippling NBA strike that admittedly, my NBA basketball fandom has never recovered from since.
Gilbert Arenas almost brought some hope and excitement back to D.C., even though he was draped in the dorky blue and gold of the Wizards. But naturally he went nuts and carried guns all the time or something, and has basically vanished from relevancy.
Since the Arenas days, the Wizards gradually began phasing out the blue and gold, and going into a red, white and blue motif, as really as a team from Washington D.C. really should’ve been doing from the onset. Honestly, I’m not sure why the Wizards and the Capitals were so fixated on blue and gold back in those days.
But the Wizards finally got the message, and joined the Nationals and the also re-branded Capitals in adopting the colors of Old Glory:
Problem was however, was the presence of the dorky looking bearded wizard. Seriously, couldn’t have like Al Sharpton or some black race-card wielders spoken up back in 1997 about use of the word “wizard” and say that was too close to Ku Klux Klan grand wizard terminology or something to have nixed it in the first place?
Either way, I think it became clear that complaints like my own were not few and far between, and the general consensus was that the wizard graphic itself was undoubtedly lame. Eventually, a “secondary” logo was developed, which is to say “the logo we like more than our actual one,” which was admittedly not bad at all:
Clearly, the mentality was “name of city more important than name of team,” which gave them free reign to not actually have to use the word “wizard” much less display any sort of graphic pertaining to a bearded wizard.
The simplicity of “DC” along with the nod to the Bullets with the long hand reading up for the basketball was kind of awesome, acceptable, and it was clear that the logo was well received based on how quickly it replaced any forms of bearded wizards on the actual court graphics itself.
But naturally, this was still an interim solution; as long as the full proper team name existed, the chance of usage of the lame wizard logo was always in play.
And here we’ve come full circle, with the new Wizards logo. Literally, as it’s a giant circle that looks more like a pog than a sporting team’s logo.
But for what it’s worth, it’s a gigantic improvement from the old logo. Sure, they’re now kind of like the Utah Jazz or Los Angeles Lakers, as teams named what they are, solely in name, and with zero relevance to their New Orleans and Minnesota roots, respectively. Deadspin was quick to sully the fanfare of it by comparing it to looking like a giant phallus readying itself to penetrate a starfish in the sky, but ultimately, I still think it’s a solid logo overall.
It has the Washington Monument on it predominantly, as a nod to the city in which the team plays in, and the red, white and blue color scheme is appropriate for a team in the nation’s capital.
As far as my criteria goes for what makes a good logo good, the Wizards have gone from one of the worst sports logos out there, to something substantially way, way higher.
It’s just a shame that the team is still called the “Wizards.” All the wizarding in the world can’t wizard out the fact that they’re still called that.
