

Earlier this year, due to the controversy surrounding North Carolina’s HB2 law, the NBA made the decision to move the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte to New Orleans. If there’s a city that’s totally prepared to take on a big-time marquee event on short notice, it’s New Orleans. To push that point forward, the league has already unveiled the logo set for the 2017 All-Star Game.

As expected, the logo borrows heavily from the hometown team’s visual identity and features from landmarks around the Crescent City. That means plenty of sublimated fleur-de-lis symbols, and a secondary logo that is in the shape of the symbol as well.

Here’s a piece from the NBA’s press release that basically confirms the inspiration for this particular design:

The Crescent City-inspired design features an iconic ironwork border with the classic fleur-de-lis symbol strewn across the background. The New Orleans Pelicans’ team colors – gold, navy and red – are also incorporated into the logo scheme.

Now, if the logo looks familiar, then that might not be a coincidence. This will be the third time since 2008 that New Orleans has hosted the marquee event on the NBA’s calendar, and the 2017 logo is somewhat similar to the 2014 logo.

There’s a possibility that the 2017 logo set could have been a rejected design from 2014 that is only seeing the light of day due to the circumstances that ended up bringing the All-Star game back to New Orleans, but that’s just speculation at this point. Personally, I prefer this set over the 2014 set, so this may have ended up being yet another blessing in disguise for the league when it comes to the 2017 NBA All-Star Game.

What do you all think? Are you all feeling this logo set as much as I am? Or could the league have done a better job with this one?