A Deeper Dive into the Phoenix Suns 2022-23 City Edition Uniforms.
By: Aryton Temcio
Since 2017 the NBA and Nike have designed multiple new sets of jerseys for all 30 teams but are most creative with the “City Edition” line. The City Edition jerseys are meant to represent the city and community on the court and tend to stray far away from traditional designs.
The state of Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized Native American Tribes and for the first time in the Phoenix Suns history, they have created a jersey representing this community.
After three straight years from 2017 to 2020 of representing the large Hispanic population in Arizona with jerseys that read “Los Suns” on the chest, the Suns decided to take a different approach. For the 2022-2023 season, the Phoenix Suns unveiled an unfamiliar bright turquoise jersey that followed a special game-by-game promotion called “OrigiNativ Celebration Nights”.
The new uniform features many different details that display the Native community in a creative and enjoyable way. The jersey’s main turquoise represents the “protection stone” or “living stone” that is seen as a color of strength, frequently used in Native American jewelry.
Your eyes are immediately drawn to the center of the jersey, where under the familiar, all-black sunburst logo, is large lettering with a bright stack of yellow, red and white, surrounded by a black outline. These four colors portray the Native American Medicine Wheel, used to show “the circle of life and four cardinal directions”.
The collars of the turquoise jersey are bright red and are to represent the red rock that is found throughout Arizona. The red trim from the collars follows the side panel of the jersey and runs all down the jersey to the shorts, in between a turquoise step pattern and an important piece of black trim.
This black trim has eleven translations on the right side of the jersey and eleven translations on the left, one for each of the 22 Native Tribes that each read the word “Sun” in each respective language. Following the jersey down to the bottom jock tag you will find a special tag showing that the jersey is a “City Edition” jersey.
Directly above the jock tag is a new logo used by the Suns on their new court and promotions for “OrigiNativ Celebration Nights”. This logo uses a familiar center to many Suns fans as is the same “PHX” banner from the Phoenix Suns alternate logo used from the late 1990s to the present day.
Surrounding the banner are 22 individual feathers, one for each tribe native to Arizona and represented by the Suns. The feathers are colored white, red, yellow, and black, which are the same four colors used in the jersey numbers, representing the Medicine Wheel and the four directions. These colors are seen again on the back of the jersey where the same jersey number on the front is larger on the back, right below the player’s name.
The Phoenix Suns wanted to make sure they got the design correct, by working with Native American Tribes and businesses themselves to better represent the Native American population as a whole. Some of the businesses the Suns partnered with are Native Ground Coffee, a coffee shop based out of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Cahokia SocialTech+ArtSpace, Be Known Athletics, and a lot more all of which are run by members of the Native American tribes, and communities in Arizona.
In a press release made by the Phoenix Suns, senior director of presentation Shawn Martinez said, “From the beginning, it was essential for us to engage and involve our Tribal communities and leadership in the design and development of the uniform. This enabled us to modify and enhance the uniform design with appropriate and culturally relevant details that otherwise would have been missed. Hearing the voice of our Tribes and having their support makes this even more special. It was definitely a collective team effort.”
It is still unsure if the Phoenix Suns will return for the next 2023-2024 NBA season with another jersey to show representation to the 22 Tribes that are native to Arizona but the amount of good that has come out of just the past six months is something that the team, designers and all members of all tribes should be very proud about.