Over the past few decades many intrepid Deadhead sports fans have showed off their love for their favorite band and favorite team by wearing t-shirts that featured a team’s logo inside the iconic skull artwork from the cover of the Grateful Dead’s 1976 live double album Steal Your Face. These “bootlegged” t-shirts were sold in parking lots of Dead-related concerts across the country without the permission of the band or the team illustrated on them. Now, thanks to a first-of-its-kind licensing deal struck by an apparel maker with both the NBA and the Grateful Dead, Sportique will sell official “Steal Your Team” style t-shirts for men and “Dancing Bear” style t-shirts for women sporting the logos of nine professional basketball teams that will be available starting next month.
These new t-shirts, which retail for the extremely lot-unfriendly price of $35, aren’t exactly like the “Steal Your Team” style shirts we’ve come to know as they feature a basketball in the middle of the Stealie instead of the team’s logo. On the new shirts the logo is placed below the skull with the name of the team written in a trippy font. Women’s shirts find a Dancing Bear surrounded by the team’s logo and the name of the team printed in that oh-so-heady ’70s font. The Knicks, Nets, Heat, Celtics, Clippers, Warriors, Lakers, Bulls and Thunder are the nine teams represented on the shirts which are expected to be available in the middle of April. Somewhere former NBA player Sarunas Marciulionis, a former NBAer and the member of the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team who convinced the Grateful Dead to provide his team with “Skullman” t-shirts, is feeling like a pioneer.
Here’s some more photos of the NBA/Grateful Dead t-shirts…
[via Sports Illustrated]
