Our best logo tournament ever continues today with the National Basketball Association’s Baltimore / Capital / Washington Bullets / Wizards, sixty years old, three cities, two nicknames and lots of small changes to the logo and color.
Thanks to everyone who participated in our Baltimore Orioles survey earlier this week, you can see the results of that here. Over six thousand votes were cast! You guys are fantastic.
As in the case of the Orioles, we will start here with a little history lesson about the team before we get to the survey, which is basically at the end of this post.
How did wizards get their team?
The Washington Wizards began their time in the capital region like the Baltimore bullets when the Chicago Zephyrs he moved to Baltimore on March 25, 1963. It was a return of NBA basketball to the city of Baltimore, which had been home to the (original) Baltimore bullets only nine years earlier.
“I am very happy with our choice [of moving to Baltimore]”Zephyr owner David Trager said.” We have received better offers from other cities, but Baltimore simply has a better climate for professional basketball. The city has been exposed to it, people know, they have a point of view. sporty. “
Ten years later, in 1973, the Bullets moved to a new arena on the outskirts of Washington, DC and changed their name accordingly, first to the Capital Bullets and then a year later to the Washington Bullets. In 1997 the team was renamed Washington Wizards.
Why are Washington Wizards called Wizards?
The Wizards announced their new name on February 22, 1996, over a year and a half before playing their first game under the new name in the fall of 1997. The change from the Washington Bullets came after an anti-violence campaign .
“I realized some time ago that we should consider changing our name,” said team owner Abe Pollin. “I took a newspaper and saw the word” bullets “in the title and thought the article was about my team.” He later said: “The priority for us was to make a statement about anti-violence, to make a statement that bullets kill people. Therefore we felt that the name Bullet was no longer appropriate. “
“Wizards” was chosen following a survey conducted by the team with the possible winning option that outperformed other options such as Dragons, Express, Sea Dogs and Stallions. The change was not without legal problems, a trademark infringement lawsuit was filed by the Harlem Wizards, a New Jersey-based comic basketball company. A federal judge dismissed their case on January 10, 1997.
Going back to bullets, their name can be traced back to Original Baltimore bullets, so called on October 31, 1944. The original Bullets began life in the American Basketball League during the 1944-45 season. They moved to the Basketball Association of America in 1947 which then became the NBA in 1949 and the team eventually folded after the 1953-54 season. When the Chicago Zephyrs moved to Baltimore, the Baltimore Zephyrs were briefly defined by the press, but quickly cleared things up and announced that they would carry the old name of Bullets on June 4, 1963.
History of the Washington Wizards logo
Here we will take a look at each of the main Baltimore Bullets / Washington Wizards logos throughout their history (or you can watch the quick video of the Bullets / Wizards logo history above, which also includes the two logos of the Chicago team!). Following the logo history presented below, you will see a poll where you can vote for the best main logo in the Bullets / Wizards team history.
The original Baltimore Bullets logo had a bullet flying through a basketball under the name of the team, it was used from 1963-64 to 1967-68.
For the 1968-69 season the bullets switched to a horizontal word mark showing two hands after a basketball formed by that of Bullets. At the time, they couldn’t have known that this logo style would follow the team through three name changes and a series of color changes over the course of nearly 30 years.
The logo was cleaned up a bit in 1987 with the five separate fingers of each hand simplified and the name of the city removed (things would have been much easier if they had removed the city name from it in 1968)
With the change of name came a new logo, introduced on May 15, 1997, the Washington Wizards were officially born with a new combination of blue and bronze / copper colors (corresponding to the Washington Capitals of the NHL). The logo now features a long-bearded wizard balancing on a basketball, a beard also forming the letter “W”, on a crescent moon with basketball stitching.
Ten years later, wizards simply lightened the bronze / copper shadow used in the logo …
As usually happens with most radical brands of the 90s, fans eventually wanted things to go back to the old days. In the case of the Magicians, the old days were the old red, white and blue, and the club returned to those colors in 2011. Once again the color changed paired with the NHL Capitals which also brought their colors back to the patriotic palette a few years earlier.
In a surprising move, the Wizards announced a logo change on the eve of the 2015 NBA Playoffs, the change was effective immediately making it one of the only season changes of the great North American championship in recent history. The new logo kept the retro colors and abandoned the magician, the focus was now on the Washington monument placed in a roundel under a star, a “W” is also formed above the star.
Now that you’ve seen the logos, it’s time to choose your favorite! Yet, like the last poll, we are allowing you to choose your first two Bullet / Wizards logos. If you really think that only one of these logos deserves the title of the biggest Washington Wizards logo ever, please choose one! You will also see that I combined the different variants of the five-finger logo into one for the purposes of the survey, as well as the slight color variation in 2007.
I’m still working out the finer details of this logo polling tournament, right now I’m trying to make a new team on alternate days, so the next one should be Friday. We will see how it goes. If you have comments on the format, let me know in the comments.
Of course, be sure to check out ours too Baltimore / Washington bullets is Washington Wizards completes the logo and uniform stories right here on SportsLogos.Net.
