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The Heat have worn six different uniforms since Christmas

Pushing the league policies and the basic concept of a 'uniform' to their limits, the Miami Heat have worn six different uniforms since Christmas Day alone. Good thing everyone knows who LeBron is already.

By Steve Perrin
  • Red on red; Photo by Steve Mitchell USA TODAY Sports The special Christmas Day, Big Color red-on-red uniform.
  • Red on white; Photo by Steve Mitchell USA TODAY Sports The standard red-on-white home uniform the team has worn forever.
  • White on red; Photo by Geoff Burke USA TODAY Sports The standard white-on-red road uniform. Note that while this is the team's "official" road uniform, my unofficial observation would indicate that they have worn it in far fewer than half of their road games, and probably wear it less than they were the blacks. The haven't worn either of their official uniforms in the entire month of February. Maybe that's why LeBron has been so hot.
  • White on black; Photo by Russ Isabella USA TODAY Sports The black road uniform, officially an alternate but they probably wear it more than the reds. After the Bulls introduced a black alternate in the 90s, it became quite a trend for teams to have a black alternate; it's the "little black dress" of the NBA wardrobe -- simple, but elegant.
  • Black on red; Photo by Tom Szczerbowski USA TODAY Sports A really ugly throwback uniform from the 90s with big white drop shadows on blocky black numbers -- very "twelve-year-old-playing-with-WordArt". Unlike most teams who limit their use of alternate and throwbacks, the Heat wore this bad boy for five straight games at the beginning of February, including three home games. Weird. The Clippers would prefer never to see this one again.
  • White on white; Photo by Mike Ehrman Getty Images The Heat wore this alternate "white out" home uniform on Sunday versus the Lakers. I'm not sure when it was first introduced, but it hasn't been around very long.

Lately when you turn on an NBA game featuring the Miami Heat, you have to look for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade first, and then figure out which team is which, because there's no telling what Miami will be wearing.

I'm a little fuzzy on the official rules regarding uniforms in the NBA, and there are clearly exceptions as well. For instance, the ten teams that played on Christmas Day this year all played in special "Big Color" uniforms, which accounts for one of the six variants for the Heat, and clearly throwback uniforms which are allowed in some seasons don't count as an official alternate. I think the rule is that you can introduce a maximum of one new alternate once every two seasons. For instance when the Clippers redesigned their uniforms for the 2010-2011 season, they had to wait until this season to re-introduce a blue alternate.

So I guess it's not that hard, if you don't redesign your base uniform, to build up quite a catalog of unis. (Frankly, if you didn't touch the logo, you might be smarter to 're-brand' simply by introducing a new uniform while keeping all of the old ones.) There would seem to be a point of diminishing returns for having so many different looks. After all, the word uniform literally means "one form" and is defined as being the same, so having six forms would seem a bit out of the spirit of the word. But whatever that point of diminishing returns is, the Heat apparently haven't found it yet. Seems they can sell more of those number 6, number 3 and number 1 jerseys if there are more variants from which to choose.

Check out the gallery for the six uniforms the Heat have worn since Christmas Day.

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