Rockets launch ‘Space City Saturdays’ with new City uniforms

Each Saturday game for the remainder of the season — home and away — will feature the new “City Edition” uniforms for the Rockets.

The Houston Rockets launched their “Space City Saturdays” campaign for the 2019-20 season with Saturday’s home game versus Atlanta.

Each Saturday game for the remainder of the season — home and away — will feature the team’s new “City Edition” uniforms. With “H-Town” across the chest, the NASA-inspired white uniform evokes Houston’s historical and present relationship with the U.S. space agency.

The first 3,000 fans at Toyota Center for the Hawks game received complementary rally towels designed to look like the new jerseys, complete with the numbers of Russell Westbrook and James Harden.

According to the team’s website, highlights of the new uniforms include:

  • NASA font for typeface and numbers throughout the jersey
  • Traditional Astronaut ID Tag on the upper right chest
  • American flag on the belt line to celebrate U.S. national pride
  • Side panels of jersey are inspired by the Gemini Program, which helped NASA prepare for the Apollo moon landings
  • Vertical brand identifiers on the shorts to resemble a rocket launch

NASA, which is short for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has extensive history in Houston tracing back to the establishment of the Johnson Space Center (then named the Manned Spacecraft Center) in 1961. It was a key support facility in NASA’s quest (ultimately successful) to put a man on the moon that decade.

Vanessa Wyche, deputy director at Johnson Space Center, took the game’s ceremonial “First Shot” shortly before tipoff.

Unlike recent years, these latest City uniforms do not feature Chinese lettering — though that decision was made long before the franchise’s recent controversy involving China.

Similar to the plan to wear the City uniforms each Saturday, the Rockets also have a special “Flashback Friday” theme for nearly all Friday games in the 2019-20 season. In that program, the current Rockets are wearing retro-themed Classic uniforms as part of a 25-year anniversary celebration of the 1994-95 NBA championship squad.

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In total, Houston has five sets of uniforms this season. The Rockets brought back their black “Statement” jerseys from last season, while the red “Icon” and white “Association” jerseys were changed to incorporate a new font, modernized side panels, and the inclusion of black as a core color. Those sets and the Classic uniform were released in June.

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