Way back in the long, long ago of 2009, the New Orleans Hornets wore green, gold and purple special Mardi Gras uniforms for select midseason matchups to pay tribute their hometown's legendary annual Carnival celebration. The team wore them for three seasons, before the franchise went through the identity overhaul that brought us the New Orleans Pelicans, returned the Hornets to Charlotte, and relegated the Bobcats to that great mountainous forest/swamp/desert in the sky.
Now, as part of the Pelicans' ongoing attempt to more fully connect with its local fanbase — an effort that has brought us such wonders as "The Special Man Plan" and such terrors as the return of King Cake Baby, NOLA's brass has brought back the Mardi Gras kits, unveiling them Thursday in an event at Mardi Gras World:
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The old/new threads — intended to "signify and represent the relationship between a team, a city and a culture of a region," as the Pelicans said at the unveiling — look just about exactly like the designs included in the massive leak of forthcoming NBA uniform designs that made its way across the Internet back in July.