The Athletic: Wizards fans are dreaming up a rebrand, and the franchise is all ears

Justin Larson, a beer brewer by trade who lives in Hyattsville, Md., has created these Washington Wizards jersey designs in the hope that the team will rebrand with changes to its uniforms. Photo illustration courtesy of Justin Larson

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Justin Larson has loved the Washington Wizards his entire life.

Watching the team’s games remains one of his favorite pastimes. But over the past six months, he has developed a related hobby that he considers a passion project. Larson has designed new Wizards uniforms in the hope that team officials will rebrand the franchise.

He shares his designs on X

, and he attempts to catch the attention of some players and team executives by including their social media handles in his posts.

Larson regards the Wizards’ red, white and blue color scheme for their primary home and away jerseys, adopted in 2011 and based on the Washington Bullets’ uniforms of the 1970s and early ’80s, as outdated and unoriginal.

“I’m determined to keep pushing,” Larson said. “I realize that none of my designs may be used, but if I can get any input into that, I would love to do that. As a fan, I want us to have good-looking uniforms and logos that you’d actually want to rock and look good and you’d wear in different states and different areas of the U.S.”

Many Wizards fans share Larson’s opinion. They want a rebrand with new primary uniforms, a new logo and, perhaps, even a new name. For the first time since the backcourt tandem of John Wall and Bradley Beal powered Washington to the Eastern Conference semifinals, the franchise has hope, with a young nucleus headed by reigning No. 1 pick AJ Dybantsa and supplemented by four-time All-Star Trae Young and 10-time All-Star Anthony Davis. The argument goes like this: A long-awaited new era for Wizards basketball should include a novel, distinctive look.

“Fans want that fresh new look, and they want something that is a little more bolder and a little more modern,” said Lee Newman, who operates a Wizards fan account on X and monitors trends within the fanbase.

The fan push for a rebrand is well known to executives within Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), the company that owns and operates the Wizards, the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, the G League’s Capital City Go-Go, the NBA 2K League’s Wizards District Gaming and Monumental Sports Network.

MSE president of business operations and chief commercial officer Jim Van Stone, MSE chief marketing officer Hunter Lochmann and their colleagues have learned about fans’ hopes for a rebrand through customer surveys, social media feedback and occasional conversations at games. Van Stone and Lochmann, in an interview with The Athletic, said they are open to new approaches that would go beyond the annual unveiling of new alternate jerseys for the league’s 30 teams.

Both executives cited the 2027 offseason, when a three-year project to renovate and modernize Capital One Arena is scheduled to be completed, as a likely beginning of a refresh. Changes to the team’s primary uniforms appear to be in the offing.

“There’s a commitment to doing the homework and the research and to doing it really, really effectively and not doing things in the moment, so I think a lot of this will be an evolving process,” Van Stone said.

“(The) 2027-28 (season) is a big year for us because the building project will be completed. That’s a major element for us. Certainly, we will be in the mix of looking at uniform designs. … There’s an openness to that. Some of the long-term logos or other changes, probably a little bit of a longer runway. But I do think the feedback that we’re getting from fans puts us in a really good situation to evaluate all of that.”

The Wizards’ last major uniform rebrand occurred in 2011, when it transitioned from a blue, black and gold color scheme back to the red, white and blue scheme that the franchise employed when the team was the Bullets.

The Detroit Pistons, LA Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers also have combinations of red, white and blue in their uniforms. Larson thinks the Wizards’ look is not distinctive enough and believes that the uniforms, with their horizontal stripes, are too busy. He points to the Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers as iconic uniforms because of their relative simplicity and because of those franchises’ winning traditions. It does not help the Wizards, Larson said, that the Wizards have not reached the conference finals since 1979.

Over the past two years, the Orlando Magic and the Minnesota Timberwolves have completed rebrands, replete with new uniforms, primary logos and court designs.

A beer brewer by trade, Larson says he inherited his creative bent from his father, who earned a degree in art from the University of Maryland, and from his maternal grandparents, who were both artists. A resident of the D.C. suburb of Hyattsville, Md., Larson designs his uniforms using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and ChatGPT.

His suggestions include primary jerseys of black, white and gold, with an outline of the Washington Monument on the sides; a royal blue alternate jersey; and another alternate jersey that reimagines the Wizards’ popular “Cherry Blossom” City Edition alternate jersey.

Justin Larson’s jersey designs include a new interpretation of the Wizards’ popular “Cherry Blossom” uniforms (left) and a reimagining of the Wizards’ 2025-26 black and gold City Edition uniforms (right).Photo illustration courtesy of Justin Larson

“I keep seeing it, too: ‘Rebrand! Rebrand!’” Lochmann said. “It’s not just a logo or jersey, right? It’s a clear, more compelling identity that connects with our fans and really talks about and reflects the future of a fan base.”

The Wizards first included “The District of Columbia” on one of their alternate jerseys nine years ago, and the organization has since adopted the phrase “The District of Basketball” to encompass the Wizards, Mystics and the Go-Go. In recent months, some Wizards players and team employees have started wearing “DC Hoops” clothing; some fans, for instance, noted online that they saw Young donning a navy “DC Hoops” short-sleeved track jacket as he sat courtside at the team’s NBA Summer League opener in July.

In recent months, MSE has released

episodes of “The Wizards Way,”

an “all-access” docuseries made by MSE production staffers and approved by Monumental Basketball’s front office, as part of an effort to enhance the team’s image. Lochmann cited “The Wizards Way” as “one element of showing what the Wizards brand is all about behind the scenes.”

Uniform and logo changes are not undertaken lightly by professional sports teams and their leagues. Any new NBA uniform typically requires two years of design, approval and manufacturing lead time for Nike, the league and individual teams.

Capital One Arena’s renovations will bring Wizards merchandise front and center for fans. In the downtown D.C. building’s prior configuration, the team store measured only 2,500 square feet, Van Stone said. When the changes are complete, the team store and boutique retail spaces within the arena will take up nearly 20,000 square feet.

“I know a lot of our fans, they want instant change, and it’s not as easy,” Lochmann said. “You have to raise your hand for certain jerseys, and there’s a slotting process. It’s more cumbersome than you’d think. … We are definitely aiming towards that ’27-28 (season) in that timing. So, if we’re raising our hands, that’s when we’re raising our hands.”

Van Stone and Lochmann indicated that a major change to the Wizards’ logo will not occur within at least the next year, but they said the team will emphasize at least one of its tertiary logos: a “W” that roughly approximates the Wu-Tang Clan’s logo.

A name change from “Wizards” is not being considered, Van Stone and Lochmann said.

But MSE officials intend to exercise some creative license by adjusting what they mean by the word “Wizard.” Rather than use the word’s magical connotations, Lochmann noted that the word “wizard” also describes “somebody with a great skill in a particular area or activity.”

“Wizardry” on a basketball court could include an acrobatic dunk, a no-look pass or a 3-pointer that swishes through the net as time expires. MSE’s marketers and social media specialists will likely lean into those examples in the coming months. Trading for Young in January and Davis in February captured Washington-area fans’ attention. Winning the NBA Draft Lottery in May and selecting Dybantsa with the No. 1 pick in June and Dybantsa’s eye-catching performance during July’s NBA Summer League amplified interest further.

“We all would agree we haven’t seen this type of energy around the team and the excitement in quite some time,” Van Stone said. “It really is a perfect opportunity. That’s not to say that even previously we didn’t look at (uniform and logo changes). We did. I just think there’s a new momentum with the young, incredible athletes that we have, and then I think with bringing in some of the veterans.”

Larson, Newman and many of their fellow fans share that excitement. Ticket sales have increased. There’s a buzz in the air. At 6 p.m. on a recent Thursday, fans nearly filled Capital One Arena’s lower bowl to attend a free open practice.

Larson believes new uniforms would help establish a new identity.

“Not only having a good team, but having a good look would be big for the city in general,” Larson said. “What team owner wouldn’t want more merch and jersey sales? When you rebrand, everybody wants all the new stuff. It makes sense to me to do it. And we’ve been kind of sitting on this red, white and blue look for a while now.”

Josh Robbins

is a senior writer for The Athletic. He began covering the Washington Wizards in 2021 after spending more than a decade on the Orlando Magic beat for The Athletic and the Orlando Sentinel, where he worked for 18 years. His work has been honored by the Football Writers Association of America, the Green Eyeshade Awards and the Florida Society of News Editors. He served as president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association from 2014 to 2023. Josh is a native of the greater Washington, D.C., area. You can follow Josh on X

@JoshuaBRobbins

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