Dallas Mavericks
What in the wide, wide world of sports is a goin’ on here?
Just as I was spewing hot sports opinions about how college and pro sports teams have too many uniform combinations comes this news this morning.
GQ, the authority on all matters of men’s style and culture, lets the reader in on a little secret about the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks’ new City Edition Uniform.
The “Trinity River Blues Collection” was designed by Fort Worth soul sensation Leon Bridges, who used the opportunity to rep his beloved hometown and its — and the region’s — rich blues heritage.
“I was able to go out to Portland and just gave them the rundown of my story and what Fort Worth means to me,” Bridges says in an interview with the magazine. “I've been there since I was 2 years old and never really had any reason to leave. And I guess the beauty of it is, I love the pace of it, and life within the music industry is chaotic. So, it's nice to come back to somewhere familiar. And my family's there and so, yeah, it's home.”
The uniform features a dark moody palette of black and blue, musical-note lettering, Bridges’ signature, and embossed guitar strings that signify the “community’s interconnectedness.”
The Mavs will debut the new uniform on Saturday, along with a City Edition court that has the phrase “For All Dallas Fort Worth” stamped along one of the sidelines.
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“It’s pretty significant. I feel like there's always been this kind of beef between Fort Worth and Dallas,” Bridges says. “Fort Worth has always been perceived as this country bumpkin kind of city. It’s always been overshadowed by Dallas.
“Fort Worth is a big part of the basketball community with the Mavs, but I don't think they've ever incorporated Fort Worth anywhere with the team. I remember initially I felt like I wasn't the right person for the job, but then I was thinking, I'm one of the few artists that's made it out of Fort Worth. … It was a huge honor for them to have me do this and I had to incorporate Fort Worth somewhere in there.”
Dallas Mavericks
This is an alternative uniform combination I can get behind.
Though he'd do gigs on occasion in Fort Worth, Bridges was completely unknown outside the city until he caught the eye of Brooklyn-based Mick Management in 2014 after doing some work with White Denim’s Austin Jenkins and Josh Block. In October of that year a blog posted the track "Coming Home."
Things then went "boom," he says. His management told him that he could give his notice to quit his job as a busboy at Del Frisco’s.
Bridges signed with Columbia Records on Christmas Day 2014.
Blues is a genre of music that originated in African American rural communities in the South in the late 19th century. It's characterized by its emotional and expressive qualities, often reflecting themes of hardship and struggle. As African Americans migrated to the cities, the music found a wider audience and gave rise to rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Fort Worth in particular has a time-honored past in the genre. This is Funkytown after all.
Ornette Coleman, Robert Ealey, and a gentleman named Curtis Ousley, better known to the world as King Curtis, just to name a few, were all raised in Fort Worth.
Read the entire interview here.
