Skip to main content

Featured Post

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park FAQ, timeline, and infographics (pinned post)

2 comments

Author of new book on the Nets: "there's a lot of smoke and mirrors" (like claiming Jay-Z as logo designer)

As I wrote in October 2017, author Rafi Kohan pointed out, "Jay-Z has been widely credited for the team's color scheme, although Gregg Pasquarelli tells me his firm, SHoP Architects, first pushed the idea."

That was plausible, as with the team logo. Remember how the Nets credited Jay-Z, but, as NetsDaily discovered back in April 2012, another designer did the real work.

And now here's an update, from Matt Sullivan, author of the very interesting new book Can't Knock the Hustle: Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets' Superstars of Tomorrow.

(I'll have a review of the book one of these days--there's a lot more than discussed in this post, and there are a few things I think are missing.)

In the interview below, Sullivan explains how tastemaker (and micro-fractional owner) Jay-Z was brought in to convince NBA brass to accept the Nets' black-and-white color scheme, seen as perhaps not colorful enough to work on TV but--in a league dominated by Black players, there was a racial subtext.

 

"They didn't bring Jay in to do a lot of stuff like this, you know he quote-unquote created the Nets' identity because he was basically the only superstar around," Sullivan said. "The Nets paid off some logo designers $20,000 to say that Jay-Z created the identity."

"They didn't even know if Jay-Z was going to wear the new Nets' jersey at the first show to start off Barclays Center," he said. "So there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, there's a lot of image building with the Nets from Day One."

Another interview
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment