Despite an eight-point lead over the Atlanta Hawks as they entered the halftime break Friday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder made a drastic adjustment in the second half, changing their uniform completely.
Due to a glitch in the uniform selection and approval process, the Thunder and Hawks played the first half with very similar colors, the Hawks in their red “icon” uniforms and the Thunder in their orange “statement” alternate.
On television, the combination was particularly bad.
“It looked strange at first, but it didn’t have much effect when I started in the first half,” said thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “It wasn’t much, but I think it made it a little bit easier on our peripherals and stuff in the second half. But otherwise it was cool.”
The league requested the jersey change, a Thunder spokesman said. The Hawks only had their red “icon” jerseys on their road trip, so the Thunder switched to white for the second half.
Both coaches, the Thunder’s Mark Daigneault and the Hawks’ Lloyd Pierce, said they didn’t really notice the uniformity in the first half.
“I certainly didn’t notice or even think about it, to be fair, then it was a mandate from the league that we were just responding to,” said Daigneault. “They informed me about it at half time when we entered the locker rooms that boys wore in white uniforms, and then we went out and played the second half.”
With teams having multiple combinations and alternates to wear, and no longer adhering to the traditional standard of home white and road color, the pre-season uniform selection process for the entire scheme is performed using an entry system called LockerVision. The home team chooses first, then the away team.
The league double checks and approves all combinations, but the Thunder and Hawks accidentally went through the approval process, according to a league spokesperson.
Typically, when there are strong contrasts, such as the red-orange problem with OKC and Atlanta, the league picks it up and corrects it before play occurs. According to a league source, this is the first time in more than 4,000 games that this has happened since the system’s introduction in 2017-18.
There have been other notable breakdowns in the basketball wardrobe, such as the Argentina national team forfeiting a match in the Pan Am Games 2019 because the players were wearing the wrong jerseys. In the 2002 men’s NIT, both Syracuse and South Carolina wore white uniforms, while Syracuse dressed up for the first half and wore orange tops and white shorts.
The change didn’t affect the Thunder, who led 63-55 in the half and won 118-109.