Denver Post April 26th 1994

 The Denver Nuggets heard more than their share of derisive catcalls over the years about those avant-garde, Lego-gone-psycho uniforms they used to wear.

Fans all over the country got on them about their erstwhile threads.

"The words "Crayola' and "crayons' come to mind," says Shawn Hunter, Nuggets' executive vice president. "We had bad management, a bad product, a bad image and our logo was outdated.'

Nuggets president Tim Leiweke is less charitable: "The old stuff was cluttered and ugly. We didn't think people wore or even liked the old logo. We needed a change."

Leiweke was right. People weren't wearing Nuggets merchandise because it wasn't cool. The team needed a new look.

The Nuggets sent creative director Dan Price off to cook up a new, more traditional design. Price came back with the current snow peak-emblazoned, blue-and-red-based Nuggets look that is selling at a far greater pace than the former one. The Nuggets unveiled their new look last May.

"Basically, we've gone from making zero revenue on merchandise to several million," Leiweke said. "We created a new image, went back to a traditional logo. We wanted to create a demand for it and we think we have."

Indeed. Business at the Nuggets Locker Room on the Mall in downtown Denver is up 50 percent from last year, all attributable to the team's newest, classy logo design. Most popular among Nuggets paraphernalia are fitted baseball-style caps, team jerseys and lightweight wind-breaker jackets.

"It's like night and day," said store manager Bob Brauer. "We're way ahead of last year. Most people say they like the logo but what they really dig are the colors. The old colors were too much."

As a result of the design change, the Nuggets have gone from "dead last" in licensed merchandised sales to "top-10" status, according to Hunter.

The National Basketball Association's merchandising and licensing division, however, begs to differ. According to that department, the NBA merchandise leaders are the Chicago Bulls, the Charlotte Hornets, the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, the New York Knicks, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics, the Seattle SuperSonics, the Golden State Warriors and the Portland Trail Blazers.

Sales of Nuggets stuff hasn't been as phenomenal as the popular Colorado Rockies merchandise, but they're a big improvement over sales of the old Nuggets logo product. Which was nil.

"You never saw the old one - on a hat, a T-shirt ... on anything, anywhere," Brauer said. "It wasn't something that people could grasp."

Sales at the downtown Nuggets store - there is a second one in the Cherry Creek shopping center - began to improve once the team did on the floor. It continued through last season and started going over the top as this current squad got hot.

Most important of all, the players like the new uniforms.

No longer are they the sartorial laughingstock of the NBA.

The team has had an eclectic and colorful logo history:

*As a new entry in the defunct American Basketball Association, the team was known as the Denver Rockets, and wore a "Ringsby System" logo because the team was owned by Bill Ringsby, who operated Ringsby Trucklines Inc. That logo lasted from 1967-68 through 1970-71.

*From 1971-72 through 1973-74, the team shifted to a cartoon rocket dribbling a multicolored ABA basketball.

*One of the more popular logos was "Maxi Miner," which had a run from 1974-75 through 1980-81 and featured a bearded cartoon character wielding a pickax in one hand and a basketball in the other.

*And then there was the Lego-style "Denver Skyline" logo introduced in 1981-82 that the team buried last year. Enough said.

NBA merchandising and licensing has a policy of not releasing specific figures on individual team apparel sales, but things are looking brighter for Nuggets garb, according to league spokesman Peter Land.

"I can tell you there has been a significant increase in sales of Denver Nuggets merchandise this year over last," Land said.

"And that is due in part to the team's new design. We're pleased that they've done so well."