^{by Matt Anderson}

Starting as a high school athlete, I always bought into the saying: Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good (yes I know that's grammatically incorrect). There's probably some psychological study out there that either proves or disproves the idea that if have confidence in your outward appearance your performance in whatever task improves. But I'm not a psychologist, and I don't have a JSTOR subscription to try to track that study down.

Ever since Nike took over the NBA uniform contract, there have been a plethora of jerseys for every team, including the Warriors. Some are amazing, like the GOAT slate "The Town" jerseys. Some are terrible, like the eyesore that was the yellow "The Bay" set.* But more importantly, it felt like the Warriors' performance was somehow connected to the jersey they were wearing that night. Take, for instance, the aforementioned "The Bay" uniform. It felt like the Dubs always lost when they wore that. And even though the last time we saw the OG "The Town" jersey was probably the second worst night of the Dynastic Run (Oracle's last game, the game Klay tore his ACL, losing the title to the Raptors), it felt like we kicked ass whenever we wore it.

*I will admit that the "The Bay" logo was pretty neat. It just worked better stamped on a hat or t-shirt rather than Steph's chest.

In years past, there have been some fire jerseys and some duds. This year was a bit of a mixed bag. The Cal-inspired Statement set: meh. The Run-TMC throwbacks, pretty cool, but hard to follow up to the red/blue throwback of last year or the Sleepy Floyd era throwback from prior seasons. The City edition is truly an abomination against whatever deity you may or may not believe in.** I will always stan for our standard white and blue uniforms. They are sleek, with a great logo, and a fantastic color combination that really pops. TBH, those two unis are part of why I fell in love with the team, and this year, they are the best of the bunch.

**You're really going to "celebrate women" with an ugly flower that the players put in their pants?

That said, I wanted to test out my theory: is there any connection between wearing a cool uniform and how the team performs. So I went through the results to date and used NBA LockerVision to tabulate the team's record in each jersey. The results were a little surprising.

First, let's start with the "vibes." If you asked me to rank the jerseys on how I felt the Warriors performed in each, I would have put them in the following order:

• Association (standard white jersey)
• City (the black abominations)
• Classic (Run-TMC)
• Icon (standard blue)
• Statement (Cal-inspired)

Next, let's look at frequency. Since the jersey options are all part of the League and Nike trying to entice us to buy merch, I assumed that the City, Classic, and Statement jerseys would get the most play. Those jerseys are usually only for a year, so I thought the team would play in them while they can. That's sort of the case. The team has worn the City jersey 21 times, but it's worn the Association jersey 26. It's also only worn the Classic and Statement jerseys 10 and 11 times, respectively.*** In-line with my expectations, Dubs have played in their trademark blue and yellow Icon jerseys a total of 9 times.

***The Statement jerseys are getting their 12th game tonight against the Spurs.

So what's the record? Which jersey should we connect with success and which with failure? Surprisingly, our classic white jersey is by far the one we perform the worst in. We have only won 8 of the 26 games we played in it. Not surprisingly, we most frequently wear this jersey on the road. For example, that disasterous 0-fer trip at the beginning of the season...we wore the Association jersey in each game. Great Friend of the Pod and Are You Smarter Than a Bandwagon Fan legend, Noah would probably say it's the bad juju of wearing what used to be considered the "home" jersey on the road.

The winningest jersey? Ironically, the one we have worn the least (and the record shows): the Icon, that classic, elegant, no notes, blue and yellow staple. This baby clocked in at a dominant 7-2 for a .778 win percentage. Next, somewhat surprisingly, was the blah Statement jersey at .636. The Classics bolstered a respectable 6-4 record, again making me wonder why we don't wear such a sharp jersey more often. And rounding things out was the City jersey with a .571 record. More evidence against my argument.

So, the numbers show our two best jerseys this year occupy the top and bottom position on the table, and the cool to terrible jerseys all have comfortably winning records. It appears we have proven the maxim about looking good and performing well wrong. At least for a season where the uniforms have been the least of the Warriors' problems.