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Talk about a potential change in the NBA logo to fit the likeness of Kobe Bryant has swarmed this week in the wake of his death, with many active players clamoring for a change. The National Basketball Players Association has even talked about a potential change to honor the Los Angeles Lakers legend and engrave him as a pillar of today's NBA game.
According to Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports, sources familiar with the league’s thinking said there is no interest in forcing the likeness of an individual player into its logo, since one could argue that are many players who have proved instrumental to the growth of the game.
To this day, the NBA has never admitted that the logo it boasts today is in the likeness of Hall of Famer Jerry West — a known fact for many aficionados. This is despite the logo designer, Alan Siegel, often saying he used a picture of West as the inspiration for the design.
West himself wants to reap no benefit from his likeness and has even been on the record saying he wishes it was someone else and would be glad to see the logo change to another's likeness instead.
The NBA to this day sustains that the logo is meant to be generic and not modeled after any particular player.
That also helps in plenty of ways, as the image of a player can come with a bevy of ramifications based on the reputation (think of Bryant's sexual assault case in 2003), as well as the potential diss of others just as influential to the game. The likes of Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Michael Jordan, and many others would want to have a word if that was the case.
This might be a knee-jerk reaction to a true tragedy, one that has saddened the NBA world, but the league will by no means sacrifice that integrity only to momentarily bring solace to those who miss the Lakers legend, even if he's gone too young.
