AJC June 24th 2007

 When the newest additions to the Atlanta Hawks ceremonially don the team's cap and jersey at Thursday night's NBA draft, you might do a double-take.

Not because of the players, necessarily, but because of the apparel.

After using the same logo for 12 years and the same primary uniforms for eight, the Hawks this week will unveil a new look for the 2007-08 season.

Their home uniform, while retaining the league-required white background, will change from a red-yellow-black color scheme to blue- red-silver. Their road uniform will change from predominantly red to predominantly navy blue. And a new logo, to be used on the uniforms as well as on caps and other merchandise, will carry a close-up side view of a hawk's head --- "sleek and aggressive, a fierce look in its eye, swooping onto its prey," said Lou DePaoli, the team's executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

If it sounds as if the Hawks take this stuff very seriously, well, they do.

Sports teams attach importance to cosmetic matters like uniforms and logos because of the statements they are intended to make and the merchandise sales they sometimes can generate.

Changing the look of the Hawks was an 18-month process that included extensive consultation with officials from the NBA and Adidas, the league's uniform and apparel supplier. On DePaoli's desk, there's a stack of hundreds of sketches of possible new looks that were considered and dismissed.

Executing the change to the chosen design won't be cheap. A new Philips Arena floor will be required, because the current one reflects the old color scheme. Dozens of signs throughout the arena will have to be changed. New uniforms will be needed for the mascots, as well as for the players. And new business cards and stationary, too.

Total price tag?

The Hawks have budgeted $750,000 for their new look, DePaoli said.

The return on investment?

"I think it'll help people look at us differently," DePaoli said. "They'll look at the new uniforms and the logo and hopefully think, 'Oh, I like that.' So maybe then some of the old preconceived notions go away."

The preconceived notions are mostly negative: The Hawks have had eight consecutive losing seasons and haven't made the playoffs since Philips Arena opened in 1999, the NBA's longest current streak of seasons without a playoff appearance.

The Hawks have gone through some memorable fashion statements --- or mis-statements --- through the years, including the green-and- blue look of 1970-72 and the huge hawk clutching a basketball on the front of the jersey in 1995-99.

Coming off the worst stretch of seasons in franchise history, the Hawks' new look draws from a brighter era.

The general color scheme of the new uniforms --- mostly blue, red and white --- is the same as when the team moved to Atlanta from St. Louis in 1968. While the home uniform of recent seasons had red lettering with yellow shadowing on the front, the new home uniform has blue lettering with red trim and silver striping. The new road uniform (blue background, white lettering with red trim and silver striping) is reminiscent of what the team wore in 1958, when, as the St. Louis Hawks, it won the franchise's only NBA championship.

"We looked at a lot of possibilities but kept going back to our history," DePaoli said. He noted that the 2007-08 season will be the team's 40th in Atlanta and will mark the 50th anniversary of the franchise's lone championship.

"It's a good time to pay homage to our roots," team president Bernie Mullin said.

The primarily yellow second road uniform worn at selected games since 2004 will be retired.

Changing the logo was as involved as changing the uniform.

Because logos are ubiquitous around the NBA, the league assesses a $500,000 fee if a team abandons its primary logo. The Hawks avoided that charge by retaining their 12-year-old logo of a mostly red hawk clutching a basketball, albeit changing the typeface and the secondary colors (out with yellow, black and brown; in with blue, silver and white).

That familiar logo, with the colors updated, will continue to be prominently used, including on the Philips Arena court. But it is not the logo that will appear on the new uniforms --- or on the caps that Thursday's draft picks will immediately don.

For those applications, the team is adding a second logo --- the new hawk's head logo, which will be perched on both legs and the back of the neckline of the new uniforms.

Players had complained, Mullin said, that the old, larger logo was uncomfortable on their uniforms.

"Hopefully, the new swooping hawk [logo] will represent how we'll play the next few years," Mullin said.

Changes of logos and uniforms sometimes boost merchandise sales, particularly for the more popular sports franchises, but Mullin and DePaoli say that wasn't a primary consideration in the Hawks' changes. Revenue from merchandise sales is pooled and shared equally by all 30 NBA teams, meaning that even if Hawks sales were to surge, the team would get only 1/30th of the additional proceeds. (One exception: Teams don't have to share the revenue from merchandise sold in their own arena. But most gear tends to be sold elsewhere.)

Assorted merchandise with the Hawks' new colors and logo will be on sale at the team's draft party at Philips Arena Thursday night (or at hawks.com starting today). The new jerseys won't be available until the fall, but pre-orders can be placed online and at the Team Gear II store at Philips.

As bullish as the Hawks are on their new look, they recognize that a losing team never looks good. What they're hoping for is a convergence of cosmetic and substantive change.

"We think the timing is right," DePaoli said. "We're a team that we think is going to make the playoffs next season, and as a marketer we have to plan for it in advance."

Whether the playoffs pan out could depend on whether the Hawks this week obtain the right players to wear those new uniforms.