Enes Kanter reveals Boston Celtics’ new alternate jerseys

We now have an idea of what may well be Nike’s new alternate jerseys for the Boston Celtics this season, after Enes Kanter posted some pictures on his Instagram story this afternoon. They’re... well, see for yourselves.

The first thing that might jump off the page to you here is that the jerseys, well, aren’t actually green. Rather, they’re some kind of strange teal color. Though I supposed it’s always possible that the Celtics are about to announce their relocation to Atlantis, some have speculated that this could be the result of awkward lighting in the original photographs. It makes some degree of sense: here are the jerseys when color-corrected.

That’s a bit better. If indeed this is the actual color scheme of the jerseys, then it’s pretty clearly drawing inspiration from the St. Patrick’s Day alternates of the Big Three era. It’s a hard combo to argue with — Celtics green with gold trim is a winning combination.

The color isn’t the problem, though. The issue is the icky looking attempt at a Gaelic font that replaced the traditional block letters on the front of the jersey and the jersey numbers. That’s the font used by every storefront of your local Renaissance faire. Odds are there’s an Irish pub within ten minutes of your house that uses that font on their sign. That font just told me the Lord of the Rings movies are actually terrible because they left out Tom Bombadil.

Weirder yet, they haven’t changed the font for Kanter’s name like they did for everything else, so the back of the jersey is awkwardly mismatched. Why are the numbers outlined but not the name? It’s just a bad combination.

Obviously, alternate jerseys are unavoidable. There’s too much money to be made from introducing something new every year. In Boston, the problem with alternates is the same as always, though: the base jerseys are so simple and iconic that they create a high bar to clear. Sometimes it works out — last year’s were pretty good, after all, and the original St. Patty’s Day ones are iconic. But these seemed to have joined the ranks of the duds. Remember the grey, sleeved jerseys that looked like pajamas?

But perhaps I’m being unfair, and these jerseys have some value that I’m not seeing. What do you think? Place your vote in the poll below and sound off in the comments to let us know your thoughts on the new alternate jerseys.