Bob CollinsIt was — and is — bad enough when the Mayo Clinic Lynx became the first major sports team in this area to plaster advertising on their uniforms. They did so four years ago with good reason; the WNBA is still a struggling league.
Its stepparent — the National Basketball Association — is not. The owners, thanks to a rich new TV deal, can’t count their money fast enough to keep up.
So the announcement that the Boston Celtics — the league’s most storied and tradition-bound team — would go with jersey billboards has upset the purists.
The Celtics jersey will now carry the GE logo. The conglomerate is moving its headquarters to Boston.
The Celtics are one of three teams — Philadelphia and Sacramento are the others — that are adopting jersey advertising. The rest will most certainly follow.
In announcing the new logo, a Celtics exec acknowledged the team’s bond with tradition.
“We’ve got Auerbach, we’ve got Russell, we’ve got Bird, and now we’ve got Thomas Edison,” Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck told the Boston Globe.
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