For the first time since the 1990s, the Phoenix Suns are bringing the purple “sunburst” look back to their regular uniform rotation. The look will serve as the team’s Classic Edition uniform throughout the 2022-23 season.
The sunburst uniform, whose 30th anniversary is being celebrated this year, debuted on opening night of the 1992-93 season, which ended with a trip to the NBA Finals. The remake features a more form-fitting and lighter-weight design.
“Everything was new going into that season,” said Mark West, a center for the Suns for eight seasons who now serves as the team’s charity ambassador. “It was impressive, just to have something new. It was really all about the anticipation for the new year.”
After then-general manager Jerry Colangelo fronted a new ownership group that purchased the Suns in 1987, a series of initiatives were launched, culminating with the 1992-93 season.
The team was set to move out of Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum and into its new downtown arena, former Suns All-Star Paul Westphal was named head coach and Dream Team power forward Charles Barkley was acquired via trade from the Philadelphia 76ers.
“It was the first season after the Barcelona Olympics with the Dream Team, and the NBA was put on the global map,” said Graham Wincott, the Suns’ senior director of marketing. “[Getting Barkley] really put [the Suns] over the edge, [finishing] with the best record in the league, and he won MVP. It told a lot of the world who the Suns were.”
“Jerry Colangelo really wanted to see a new, clean, modern look,” said Tom Ambrose, former vice president of marketing for the team. “Our old uniforms had a western-style typeface and a sunburst, but it was on the side of the shorts. He wanted a change. He wanted to see some ideas.”
As Ambrose recalls, he kicked off an exploratory jersey design meeting with Colangelo and team executives by first holding out a toy rubber chicken.
“Don’t be chicken,” he joked to the group. “Don’t be afraid of making a change.”
From there, the group glanced through sketches that featured everything from a font-less tank top dominated by a sunburst atop word-heavy shorts, to purple or black looks with the sunburst emanating from a corner of the jersey.
While purple and orange have been the team’s colors since the franchise was founded in 1968, the original redesign pitch to Colangelo also included a wild-card option — overhauling the colors to dark blue and silver.
“That…
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