In a summer full of popular moves for the Memphis Grizzlies, perhaps none has resonated as strongly as the team’s announcement that they are bringing back the 1994-95 Vancouver Grizzlies jerseys and creating a tribute court as part of a celebration of the franchise’s 25th anniversary.

Everyone loves it, including the young foundational duo of Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson, Jr., both of whom have been ecstatic about the new jersey plans on social media. Their enthusiasm has led many fans to wrongly infer that those two players had something to do with the decision to go with the throwbacks this season. The truth, as ever, is more involved, and I wanted to know exactly how this whole thing came about. So I spoke with the people who made it happen in Vancouver and Memphis.

“As we were down the fairway pretty well on the Raptors project, starting to design the logos and stuff, I got a call from the Commissioner’s office and he said, ‘Pack up your stuff and head out to Vancouver, we’re going to have a 29th franchise.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ It took us all by surprise that we were going to add not one, but two franchises in the same year, and they were both going to be in Canada.”

Tom O’Grady was the NBA’s Global Creative Director in 1994, and he was a busy man. He was spearheading the creation of all the logos, wordmarks, and designs of the soon-to-be Toronto Raptors franchise and overseeing the birth of the WNBA. The league’s website, NBA.com, was also in its design infancy, and O’Grady was working on that, too.

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“A lot of plates spinning,” O’Grady said. So when then-Commissioner David Stern told him to head to Vancouver to work on designs for a new team, he had no choice but to fly west.

“It was really a ‘strap in and go’ type of moment,” O’Grady said.

While O’Grady and his collaborators had six-plus months to conceive and develop the Raptors’ logos and marks, things were more compressed, time-wise, when it came to the Vancouver franchise. O’Grady figures that the six months the Raptors got was cut to around three for Vancouver. But at least they had a name.

“When we started the Grizzlies project,” O’Grady said, “they knew they wanted the name ‘Grizzlies’. There were a bunch of outtakes from the Raptors names, names like Hogs, Terriers and Mounties. Vancouver looked at those, but when we got the call, their owner at the time (Arthur Griffiths, Jr.) said that he really liked the name Grizzlies. He emphasized the connection they had with social good and working with the Native Canadian culture in British Columbia to achieve that connection.”

With that in mind, O’Grady and his partners went to speak directly with leaders within the Haida community. The Haida are a Native Canadian people who have lived in British Columbia for centuries, with the majority currently making their home on an archipelago off the West Coast of British Columbia, just below the southern tip of Alaska. It was their way of life that ended up being represented in almost every aspect of the Grizzlies’ initial jersey design.

“We were introduced to a Haida chief who really worked closely with me to explain the culture, the background and the followings of his people,” O’Grady said. “He even provided some loose sketches of how we should pay homage to the area; they really helped us understand the colors and the names. So when we started getting into the color scheme, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, will this be a purple team’, or whatever the heck it could have been. They really narrowed down the series of colors that were reflective of the culture, especially the grizzly bear in that area.”

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The people in the Grizzlies’ fledgling front office had some ideas about what their color scheme might look like, but after the meeting with Haida leaders, there would be no doubt as to the Grizzlies’ colors. They told O’Grady: “The turquoise, for us, represents the sky and the heavens. The black is the grain and the earth. The brown is the bear itself, and the red is the blood and the soul of our tribes.”

O’Grady laughed: “So we didn’t really have to work very hard to figure out the color scheme.”

He stressed that the choice of turquoise was not accidental.

“When we put those colors together, we loved how they worked, especially that turquoise color,” O’Grady said. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, that’s another teal team.’ but it wasn’t a teal color. It’s a different color to me altogether. It’s a brighter blue. Teal is a greenish-blue, it’s a combination of green and blue. Turquoise, though, you see it in jewelry, you see it painted on the walls and the totem poles around Vancouver, it was just this wonderful look.”

Now that they had a name and a color scheme, O’Grady knew it was time to develop the rest of the logos and designs. And there was more to it than merely developing a brand. You may have noticed that there are a lot of different smaller logos associated with the Grizzlies, especially in those early days. That was by design.

“When we did expansion team identities, I believe for the first six months of the franchise’s inception into the marketplace, I think they were able to retain a huge percentage of the licensing rights with the logos to help cover the $125 million franchise fee. So instead of the NBA’s typical licensing sharing, they got an exclusive window of time to get it on the shelves and make as much money as they could. That’s why you see all these logos with it, it’s not just a primary logo and a uniform, it’s a secondary logo, it’s a tertiary wordmark, you look at their style guide and you’re like, ‘Holy cow!’

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“In the ’90s NBA world, it was a rush to make up as much money as you possibly could.”

The secondary logo that stands out more than any other is the one at the center of the Grizzlies’ new tribute court, the giant Grizzly bear. Not to be confused with Grizz, the team’s current lovable mascot, the original Grizzly bear was fierce and more than a little angry.

“We went with what we called the in-your-face look of the ’90s, the big teeth, big claws, and so on,” O’Grady said. “Branding then was a lot more in your face, so the design of the logo itself became the team’s look — a ferocious Grizzly ready to attack, a big claw coming through the lettering, even the letters themselves had claw marks on them, which we extended onto the jerseys.”

After a whirlwind three-month period, the team was ready, jerseys, logos and all. “It was really fun. We didn’t spend a lot of time in focus groups. Our time was compressed so it was a pretty wild ride,” O’Grady remembered.

That’s how the original design came to be. But bringing it back for this coming season has had its own set of challenges.

“The first thing I noticed was the color, it was a lot richer than I remember in my hazy old memory from Vancouver.”

John Pugliese is the Grizzlies’ Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Broadcast. He’s been with the team for 21 years, which means that he’s among the few to have worked in Vancouver and Memphis. More than almost anyone else, Pugliese understands all the factors that had to be considered when deciding to create these throwbacks.

“We wouldn’t be in Memphis if it wasn’t for Vancouver, and we really do want to celebrate our time, and especially that early era that can get forgotten,” Pugliese said of the mindset that went into the decision. It was a decision that was a long time in the making.

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“Literally, the uniform creation process has to start two to three years in advance, and that’s exactly what we did,” Pugliese said. “You’ve got a laundry list of different anniversaries for different points in the franchise’s history. Obviously, the inaugural season in Vancouver is one of those, the inaugural season in Memphis is one of those, and moving into FedExForum is one of those.”

Why did the Grizzlies need to time the throwback with an anniversary?

The NBA requires that any throwback or retro jersey concepts be timed with what is termed a “significant anniversary” for the franchise. Teams cannot just issue throwback jerseys willy-nilly, year after year. The league mandates that those be saved for notable anniversaries, which can be read as “ending in a -5 or a -0”. The 25th anniversary of the franchise’s inception, then, is a perfect thing to signify with a throwback jersey, as will the 20th anniversary of the team’s arrival in Memphis next year.

“When you talk about a 25th anniversary, that’s an evergreen, that’s an easy decision to make. We knew the popularity of the Vancouver teal uniforms was there, they’ve been among the top-selling retro uniforms and gear for the last 5-to-10 years,” Pugliese said. “In 2016, we submitted a plan to the league looking three years in advance. We wanted to make sure we were on the proper classic edition track — and that’s the term used by Nike, it’s the classic edition — because you start with the uniform, then you delve into the court, then the game experiences, and then all the marketing and the promotions.”

In starting with the uniform, Pugliese and the Grizzlies design team, led by Senior Creative Director David Thompson, had to select which design they wanted Nike to create. This brought up another issue — largely unknown outside of team circles — that the team had to consider. Use of the Vancouver Grizzlies marks and logos has to be licensed through Mitchell & Ness, the well-known Philadelphia-based clothier that specializes in authentic throwback gear. As part of that agreement, the marks cannot be altered.

In other words, the team can’t change the “Vancouver” on the jersey to “Memphis”, as some fans might have hoped for.

But their departure from Vancouver to Memphis was not exactly on the best terms, and because their stay in Vancouver was so abrupt, there are understandably hard feelings. Yet the jerseys will say “Vancouver Grizzlies”, in Memphis, in the year 2019. Pugliese said that seeing that “Vancouver” splashed across the chest of a team playing in Memphis sends an important message to both cities.

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“Let’s just be honest about what this is. Memphis was never on this uniform,” Pugliese said. “Even though it was on the primary logo, we never had a uniform with a turquoise base in Memphis, and we never had this type of wordmark across the chest. To replace Vancouver with Memphis wouldn’t be true to form.

“That era of Grizzlies basketball deserves its moment, and not just from a uniform standpoint. The people and the relationships were instrumental in growing Canadian basketball, and we’ve got two Canadians on our team, Dillon Brooks and Brandon Clarke. Having a team in Vancouver — and obviously the success in Toronto — that’s played a large part in that growth, and that’s something the city should be proud of.”

Once they decided on the turquoise away uniforms, the task went into the hands of the league’s uniform supplier, Nike, who then had to transform the jersey from the old design to a Nike one. The template of the uniform is known as its chassis, and the current Nike one is more streamlined than the ones made by the original manufacturer, Champion. Thompson, the Grizzlies’ design expert who has worked for the team for more than a decade, was intrigued by the process.

“You want to know ‘How did they do that?’ or ‘How are they going to do that?’ Retrofitting the jersey to fit the new design is almost all Nike,” he said. “They have the final approved artwork from way back, and the approved Mitchell & Ness template as well. They know what’s better silicon-printed, or stitched, or any of the things in production that they’re capable of, things we just don’t know.”

“The interesting thing with all these classic jerseys they’re re-imagining, the chassis of the old uniform is so different, so different, than the new ones. Like the width of the shoulders is different, Nike has different piping around the jerseys. The trim on these old jerseys used to be two inches wide and knitted. Now it’s smaller and printed as opposed to woven. We also have patches to deal with and necklines are different.”

Playing in the exact jerseys from 1995 would be a big problem; players have become accustomed to lighter, more breathable fabrics, along with a more fitted feel. Recreating the old jerseys exactly would make it feel as though the players were wearing a lead suit. So the throwbacks have to become jerseys that look the same, but are far from identical.

Coming to grips with all those small differences led to notes being sent back and forth between Nike and the Grizzlies over several months, as design samples were discreetly sent from China to Memphis (via FedEx, of course). In total, 47 different colors and styles of thread had to be used in the creation of the revamped Nike version of the old Vancouver jersey. The trim naturally became more narrow, to match the design requirements of the Nike jerseys.

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“We were also very careful in the design itself, making sure it was as true-to-form as it could be on the Nike chassis, all the way down to the detail in the trim, making sure those were correct in how they were drawn,” Pugliese said. “They were representative of Native Canadian culture so it was very important to be respectful of that.”

The trim was sorted out, the logo was taken care of. Now, for the toughest challenge of all — the gigantic bear on the shorts.

“In the case of the shorts, the bear logo was so big that — I don’t think they’d mind me saying, but even the league and Nike were like, ‘How are we going to recreate this?’ Thompson said.

And yes, the bear on the shorts is indeed big. Really big. Way bigger seeing it in person than in pictures. It’s actually a little crazy.

O’Grady agreed. “It was way too big,” he said. “The damn bear is too big on the shorts.”

And he’s being literal here, not figurative. “Because those uniforms are sublimated, not sewn on, we had to go at light speed to get it done. We were sampling and prototyping as quickly as we could, but we spent so much time on the jersey itself, the shorts got second-shifted. We normally have better quality control but that one got away from us. The way Champion translated it, they got a little big on us. What ended up happening was that people liked it, it was so big and colorful, and so ’90s, it just kind of fell into place.”

“But it’s probably 40 percent too large.” Forty percent.

Pugliese considered another issue with the gigantic bear: “I looked at the logo on the shorts. Because that logo was too big to stretch properly, it could have taken away from the performance of the actual garment itself. It could affect the physical movements of the players.”

If the giant bear was done as a patch, it might have been so unwieldy as to make wearing the shorts a problem for the players. That’s among the reasons why Thompson and the designers at Nike had to make a few tweaks for the finished product.

“On our first sample, you see a giant bear, which got sized down to something a little smaller on the second sample,” Pugliese said. “But the process had to change a little bit as to how it would end up, because the color was wrong on the second sample. The size was right but the color was wrong. Those are the things we had to play with, back and forth.”

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The shorts you see when the Grizzlies debut their throwback jerseys later this year will feature a bear sized almost exactly as originally designed by O’Grady, yet somewhat smaller than the one that was actually worn. Don’t worry, though, it’s still obscenely huge.

“In our research, we saw courts we didn’t remember. But they all had elements we used.”

While the Grizzlies have been almost universally celebrated for the decision to bring back two throwback designs over the next two seasons, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise. But the creation of an all-new throwback court, the first one in team history, was another story. More and more, teams are using multiple court designs to complement their overall themes. The Warriors will have four different courts, a handful of teams will have three, and the majority — including the Grizzlies — will feature two.

The court, unlike the uniforms, had to be original. Because the team intended to use the court for two seasons to celebrate two different anniversaries, it couldn’t merely be a recreation of a previous floor design, as is usually the case. And that meant Thompson and his creative team had a lot of work to do.

“There were five different courts from Vancouver to the first few seasons in Memphis,” Thompson said. “Looking at that body of work design-wise, knowing it had to last two seasons, it really informed us about how it couldn’t just be one specific throwback court. It couldn’t be Vancouver turquoise-dominant. It couldn’t be Memphis-dominant. So there were little elements of each court we used once we figured out what worked best.”

What they created was unique.

The design features the aforementioned giant bear at center court, but retains a lot of the uniqueness of the Grizzlies’ existing floor design. It has asymmetric logos on either sideline, like the normal floor, but this time to celebrate each of the two seasons being commemorated. The Vancouver font and style is on the left, the design from the team’s first season in the Pyramid is on the right.

“The bridges between Vancouver and Memphis were the dark-stained shooting lane, we knew we had to have that. And the big bear at center court, we had to have that, as big as the league would allow us to make it,” Thompson said. Upon closer inspection, the painted area is more of a bronze than a light brown, and is a distinct, unusual color.

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However, the most striking feature is “the river” — the curved feature that extends across the baseline and into the logo on the left side of the court. If you look closely, you can see that it’s composed of small bits of previous logos and marks from throughout the team’s history. They refer to it as “the confetti mark” because it’s so colorful.

“The floor company, when they saw the river that has what we call the confetti mark in it, uh, they may have gasped,” Thompson said. “That may have changed the price. Most courts just do not have that much detail.”

The detail is quite remarkable. It will make for a fun parlor game among fans sitting courtside, trying to guess each of the seasons represented by the snippets of color and style. The confetti adds a finishing touch to a years-long process of commemoration and celebration.

“We knew a couple of years ago when we decided to go down this path that it would be popular,” Pugliese said. “You feel it’s going to be popular because it’s done really well from a sales standpoint, whether it’s in our store or the NBA store, or anywhere else. But when you decide something two years prior, you worry that maybe it’ll be out of trend. Lucky for us, it isn’t.”

O’Grady had no idea the jerseys and designs were making a comeback: “It’s unexpected. I thought we were down the river, I thought we had gone way past that exit on the highway years ago. It’s been a lot of fun seeing them again.”

The team has been quiet about an official debut or a schedule of dates, but suffice to say, given the time, energy and expense spent to create them, you’ll be seeing the jerseys and the court far more than once this season. And that thrills O’Grady.

“The league has gotten too boring, and people are flocking back to the interesting stuff. When you drop 300 bucks on an authentic jersey and you end up with the Brooklyn Nets one, you’re like ‘Uh, could someone put some color on this thing?’ When you walk in with a Grizzlies jersey on, it’s like, at least I got my money’s worth.”

(Top photo of Sharif Abdur-RahimAndy Hayt / NBAE via Getty Images)