Brooklyn Nets | Kaws City Edition – NBA.com

The 2023-24 Brooklyn Nets City Edition uniform is where basketball, art, fashion, and creative expression converge. We’ve collaborated with renowned Brooklyn-based artist and Brooklyn Nets fan KAWS on a design that fuses core elements of the Nets brand with some of the most notable components of KAWS’ work from his early days as a gra?ti artist to his now globally recognized paintings and sculptures.
An NBA City Edition uniform represents the heritage of a city that makes each team distinctly its own. As any Brooklynite knows, there is no place quite like Brooklyn. For KAWS, a longtime resident of the borough, the opportunity to create a new jersey for the Nets was thrilling. “The history, community, and passion of this borough create an energy that inspires my studio practice, the players, and the fans. My design aims to capture the vibrancy that we experience daily when navigating Brooklyn,” he said. This uniform marks his ?rst-ever collaboration with a sports team.
Brooklyn means a lot of di?erent things to a lot of di?erent people, and that’s what gives the borough and the team that represents them a unique identity. The fuel to its beauty and culturally rich streets is the people that comprise the borough: the most populous in New York. Whether it’s in Bed Stuy or Bushwick or Brooklyn Heights, no matter where you walk you can feel the vibrancy that KAWS refers to. It’s nearly impossible to be uninspired when surrounded by a community of Brooklynites that live their lives with humble con?dence, authenticity, and pride. It’s a spirit that is embodied by our players, on and o? the court.
When the uniform was unveiled to Brooklyn Nets center Nic Claxton earlier this year at KAWS’ art studio in Williamsburg, his excitement was clear: “That’s tough. That’s gonna be our best one in my opinion, since I’ve been here.” The Nets will begin wearing the KAWS City Edition uniform on 11.04 during “Best of Brooklyn Nights”: a new tradition across ?ve home games representing the ?ve pillars of The Brooklyn Way – arts, music, food, fashion, and basketball. These home games will be played on a KAWS-designed court and programming for fans celebrating our borough’s culture.
Our Best of Brooklyn Nights will include a collectible giveaway for the ?rst 5,000 fans in attendance.
The colors and patterns found on the uniform are inspired by KAWS’ 10-part artwork, “TENSION”, evocative of the artist’s signature eye-catching abstract paintings and bold color palette.
Mixed with the Nets signature core colors, black, white, and grey, this City Edition uniform represents the best of the Nets x KAWS.
The NETS lettering across the front of the uniform are inspired by KAWS’ graphic style that hint at his early work as a gra?ti artist.
The « XX » featured on the waistband of the shorts incorporates KAWS’ signature mark. This design mark, most notably found on his large-scale sculptures and ?gures, is recognized globally.
The remixed Nets logo on the shorts is given the same treatment as the NETS across the chest, matching KAWS’ graphic style across the entire uniform.
To mark the uniform as an o?cial part of KAWS’ body of work, his signature can be found above the jocktag.
This culturally signi?cant collaboration further blurs the line between our world and contemporary art. Inspired and in?uenced by its people and streets, for Brooklyn, by Brooklyn.
KAWS is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His work engages audiences beyond the museums and galleries in which he regularly exhibits. His proli?c body of work straddles the worlds of art and design to include paintings, murals, graphic and product design, and large-scale sculptures. Over the last two decades KAWS has built a successful career with work that consistently shows his formal agility as an artist, as well as his underlying wit, irreverence, and a?ection for our times.
KAWS' artwork has been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario (2023), Serpentine Galleries in London (2022), Brooklyn Museum (2021), and National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (2019). He has also collaborated with some of the world's biggest brands and musicians to further his goal of making art accessible to everyone. His ongoing "HOLIDAY" project has garnered popular acclaim around the globe, bringing giant site-specific artworks to fans in different countries from the United Kingdom to Japan. KAWS’ artworks are highly sought-after by collectors inside and outside of the art world, establishing him as a uniquely prominent artist and influence in today’s culture.

source