The Miami Heat first took the court in 1988, but what you probably didn’t know is the team selected its first logo via fan vote. Now, an incredible tweet showing the logo finalists caused the SB Nation.com staff to stop and think about what could have been.
Ranking every possible Miami Heat logo from the 1980s
A fan vote in the late-80s gave us the Heat’s logo. Did Miami get it right?
From cartoon suns to Miami Vice, the logo concepts are a smorgasbord of creativity. The iconic Heat logo definitely stands out in a crowd — but it got us thinking, what is the best logo Miamians could have chosen in the late-1980s? We put it to a staff vote, and here’s what we came up with.
Ranking every possible Miami Heat logo from the 1980s.
No. 1 — Cool Sun.
No. 2 — The actual Heat logo.
No. 3 — Is this a volleyball?
No. 4 — The rec league.
No. 5 — The youth league.
No. 6 — The cool font.
No. 7 — Art deco meets your local DMV.
No. 8 — Don’t talk to me or my sun ever again.
No. 9 — Bride of Frankenstein.
No. 10 — Every independent wing restaurant.
No. 11 — THE Miami Heat.
No. 12 — Miami Eat.
Thoughts from the staff ...
“No. 1 looks like Miami, and I think is the most hampered by any of these logos by being black and white. Can’t you just see the basketball popping out of a TV graphic with a Hotline Miami-palette motion trail behind it? I can and it’s fire.”
“No. 2 works the simplicity of Miami’s art deco architecture into its logo, which is neat. It also doesn’t seem to realize it’s supposed to be a drawing about basketball, which is bad.”
“I think No. 3 is the same logo as the Korean BBQ place near where I grew up.”
“No. 5 is last because those are the stink lines of a rotting basketball carcass left by the side of the road.”
“Add a couple of eyes to No. 5 and it turns into the parti of an angry Cosmo Kramer.”
“There are a lot of egregious renderings of basketballs among these logos. The most contrived is on No. 6, in which the artist gave the ball chubby-bunny cheeks to make the ‘H’ in Heat. That wouldn’t have been exploited by photoshop-savvy rival fans nope not at all.”
“No. 6 appears to be the box art of a straight-to-VHS film where Dorf learns about basketball. It would NOT play well in an increasingly-sensitive 2019.”
“I like No. 7 because it looks like the basketball is going Super Saiyan.”
“Nos. 10 and 8 got bonus points for containing suns wearing sunglasses. You know that’s just to look cool without serving any real eye protection. What are you trying to protect your retinas from, sun? YOURSELF?”
“No. 11 gave the world its first prototype Baseketball.”
“No. 12 looks like it came from Double Dribble for NES.”
“I like the sunglass basketball fire suns but deducted points because, yes, we have all owned that rec league T-shirt at some point in our lives.”
