Truth About It» The Polls Are In On The New Look Wizards

Case closed, people like polls. And various polls about the same subject can all tell a different story. However, not necessarily in the case of the Washington Wizards’ new look, about which we are still discussing with expansive pixels. All signs point to success for the Monumental Sports& Entertainment posse, with much kudos to adidas (thank the basketball gods it wasn’t Reebok, which used to do the NBA jerseys until Reebok was purchased by adidas in 2006). Perusing some comment sections, the general thought is, we love the new look, but…

The color-replacement Wizards logo is bad.Even though the team still owns the intellectual property rights to that trade mark, they should really put it out of commission (as in, don’t throw it on gear and blast it for sale all over the website). But we get it, the team is seeing if anybody bites on sales. I have a feeling that soon the only people wearing the color-replacement wizard with moon logo will be sad little kids with unknowing mothers and those in other counties adding them to their 2004 Carolina Panther SuperBowl Champion and 2000 Indiana Pacers NBA Finals Champion t-shirt collections.

Road jersey sales could be down… depending on availability. There’s something about the road jersey that’s so drastically opposite from how great the home white jersey looks. Some have said a version with more blue would look better, but Ted loves red. The color placement in the top stripes makes organizational sense, but perhaps players will ultimately look like they’re wearing a red strappy onesie jumper set for the summer when actually on the court. Because that’s another thing people have said,‘Let’s see how look in them while playing.’Indeed.Then again, maybe everyone will just get used to them and forget about minor critiques. I’m sure some marketing research has told Monumental Sports this.

Others have wanted more stars, a scoop neck instead of a v-neck, and so on.

So, having already taken a look atwhat some of the pundits have said, let’s take a recap glance at a couple of the most relevant poll results…

The Vote.

Bullets Forever chose to give the full 10-point scale option to voters.Almost 25% of the voters gave the look a perfect’10′. Just under 78% gave an’8′ or above. Under 9% rated the new look a five or worse.

Wizards Insider at the Washington Post wanted a simple answer:Yes or No, no wavering or gray area. The results were 79% yes, somehow 20% no. (No decimals either).

Mr. Irrelevant gave four options:Love, Like, Dislike and Hate. Respectively, the amorous affection went from 44% to 48% to 4% to 2%.

Truth About It.net gave voters six choices,with results in parenthesis: 2 thumbs up (55%); 1 thumb up, 1 thumb kinda up (23%); Nice, but not the Bullets (10%); Shoulder shruggin’ neutral (5%); Don’t care unless they’re the Bullets (4%); 2 thumbs down (3%).

An 80-percent success rate all around is a pretty big win for the Washington pro basketball team— maybe what they expected, maybe more than expected. What Leonsis’ group is probably most interested in for the time being is that simple‘do you like it or not’ poll from the Washington Post, but they are surely keeping other things in mind for possible tweaks down the road (maybe an alternate jersey… it’s all on the table as Greg Bibb, the executive vice president of business operations, told me… after people have digested this initial run, of course).

The small sample size of TAI points to 14-percent of fans still being caught up on the“Bullets” as a team name (the 10-percent of‘nice, but not the Bullets’ added to the 4-percent‘don’t care unless they’re the Bullets’). Maybe this percentage is insignificant to Leonsis& Co. (although they’ll gladly sell some retro Bullets gear to whet appetites), and maybe it will go down over time. Maybe it would be relatively non-existent if the team name wasn’t“Wizards.” Maybe time and winning will make this all go away.

And maybe the Wizards will win back-t0-back number one draft picks in the NBA Draft Lottery (which will take place at around 8:30 PM tonight on ESPN). Who knows…

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