In today’s world, it’s rather hard to keep secrets.  A cell phone design will show up a month before its announced, a new product release will get pics snapped and shared a week before it hits shelves and, in the world of sports, a logo/uniform change never, ever makes it to the day the team actually wants to announce it.

With that in mind, let’s give some props to my Milwaukee Bucks who managed to make it to the day prior to their their desired reveal before something that looks official has leaked.

Let’s go back a bit to where this started.  On or around 2/23/2015 the below sketches were posted by a RealGM user on their Bucks message board.  This poster also said the colors would be “Green, Gold, Black and Blue” then even went as far as to post some color blocks that represented what he remembered seeing (he also said alcohol was involved, so his memory was somewhat impaired) and they looked liked this.

The sketches and colors were eventually pulled down by forum moderators because the Bucks do pay attention to the RealGM board and it would not surprise me if they made the request to have them pulled.  The idea that an NBA team pays attention to an internet forum may or may not surprise people but RealGM has, by far, the largest gathering of hardcore Bucks fans (yes, we exist) so the Bucks do pay attention.  Alex Lasry, son of one of the owners and team executive even threw a pizza party prior to the season for RealGM users.  That’s not to brag for them, just to provide context behind some of this info.

Before we then fast forward to the leaked logo at the top of this post (which more or less looks exactly like the sketch) let’s get into the Bucks throwing a bit of shade on the rumors.

Yesterday, the Bucks posted this image to their twitter and quickly took it down.

Later in the day, they came back with this tweet:

Those colors are not exactly close to blue, black or gold.  In fact, they are pretty far away from that.  Between the Bucks forum having a melt down when these images came out, and Chris Creamer’s forums assuming this was smokescreen, it was hard to know what is really coming once the Bucks make whatever announcement it was they were set to make.

Let’s not forget that Wednesday is also April Fool’s day.  An NBA team isn’t going to announce that they are going to announce something and then once that times comes, come out with “HA HA!  Totes kidding, we ain’t got nothing to announce.”  Not only that, but the first image had a date of 4/16/15 which means something was clearly set to be announced, we just didn’t know what exactly it was they planned on telling us and they eventually decided to chagne the date of the announcement.  I’m tying April Fool’s day to the orange and green images.  The colors are the joke, they’re going to give us the real info come Wednesday.

Frank Madden of Brew Hoop (probably the best Bucks blog) had something to say as well, and he said it as if he knows exactly what it is he is saying:

Add another rumor from Chris Creamer’s forum for fuel to the fire:

One of the regulars where my friend bartends sells merch at the Bradley Center.  Yesterday, they apparently stocked a shirt with the one of the Bucks’ new logos.  No word on whether or not it’s the primary, but here’s what they described:
-Roundel featuring a Buck that looks similar to the current one, but “angrier.”

-Green & Cream… no other colors.

-Reminded them of something a microbrewery would use.

They also said they didn’t personally care for the logo, but didn’t think it was bad.

The more the peices come together, the more you have to be pretty certain that the orange is indeed smokescreen.

Shortly after the Bucks posts to Twitter we finally got some leaks of the logo on the glass at the top of this post.  We’re still missing blue and black (and I think we will continue to) and have come down to dark green, cream/khaki and white.

Gone is the triangle and the deer-pig that used to be their logo.  Gone is the red and (THANK YOU, BABY JESUS) no more stupidly beveled text for their wordmark.

Overall, I think this is an improvement on their primary logo, but not necessarily something that blows my mind.  I like the “hidden” M in the buck’s neck.  The negative space above the buck’s head in combination with the way the antlers form looks like a basketball, also a nice touch.  This reminds me of logos like the Dallas Mavs primary which has an “M” hidden in the horse’s hair or the old Milwaukee Brewers logo which looks like a baseball glove but is made of an “M” and a “B”.

My main criticism is that this is maybe a bit more boring, especially when compared to other recent logo redesigns with the Pelicans (I don’t care if you think that’s a dumb name for a team, that logo is badass) and Hornets.  Even if I remain somewhat bored by the design, I can at least look at the rest of the NBA and see that we now probably have a better logo than about 2/3rd’s of the rest of the league because most of the NBA’s logos are pretty boring or outright bad.

I mean, the Clippers, Lakers, Knicks, Thunder, Magic, Sixers and Pistons have logos that are essentially basketballs and nothing else.  That’s 7 of the league’s 30 teams that basically have the same logo.

Dark green and cream will also be a fairly unique color combo, at least in terms of the NBA.  The Celtics do have their St. Patty’s alternate which has kelly green and a darker khaki, but I suspect when the Bucks’ unis are revealed they won’t bear any resemblance to that.  The Minnesota Wild’s away jerseys are mostly green/cream but they still use a bit of red.  That’s about all you can find within professional sports in regards to that color scheme, though there are a few teams in college (USF, Colorado State come to mind) as well.

We should know a lot more tomorrow during halftime of the Bucks and Bulls game.  I’m thinking at the very least, the complete logo and color set will be reveled, I’m betting money we’re going to have to wait to see the uniforms.