The NBA will be giving badges of honor to the franchises which have won NBA titles next season. If an NBA team has won a championship, their jerseys will have a gold mark on the back collar.
.@PhilHecken @sportslogosnet NBA teams will have a gold "mark" on the back collar if the franchise has a title: pic.twitter.com/oDwntb5mSK
— Conrad Burry (@conradburry) July 15, 2014
ABA titles won’t count for getting a gold mark but some relocation titles will be acknowledged. As Barry Petchesky of Deadspin notes, the Hawks will get a gold mark for their St. Louis championship but the Thunder will not get one for the SuperSonics 1979 title, presumably because doing so would literally have caused the greater Northwest to explode in self-righteous indignation.
Sure, it’s a small mark but it’s a neat idea which pays homage to the history of the NBA. And the drastic lack of parity in the NBA means that about half the league won’t even have a gold mark on their jersey anyways.
Now the NBA needs to work on a way to signify how many titles a franchise has won. There is something not quite right about the idea of the Hawks sitting on equal footing with the Lakers when it comes to NBA championship history.
