It's a good year to be wearing silver & black

Over the past few weeks, it has been a pretty good time to be dressed in silver and black. Just a couple days ago the Los Angeles Kings beat the New York Rangers to win the Stanley Cup in hockey and as of tonight, the San Antonio Spurs took out the Miami Heat to win the NBA Championship. These are two of just a handful of professional American sports teams who don silver and black as their colors.

That is two of the big four sports. There is just one other team in major American pro sports that wears Silver & Black -- the Oakland Raiders. You could also count the Chicago White Sox, though silver is not a dominant color in their scheme so it's a stretch.

The Kings didn't always don silver and black as their uniforms. Purple and yellow was once their uniform colors which matched that of the Lakers. But in the '80s when the Raiders came to Los Angeles, they saw the popularity of the Raiders' colors and in 1988 they changed their color scheme to get a piece of the merchandise sales. That was also when they added Wayne Gretzky to the lineup which helped matters tremendously.

The problem with that was a lot of those jersey sales and the color scheme along with it had become LA gang colors. The Raiders moved back to Oakland in 1995 and three years later the Kings went back to having purple in their uniforms.

Then in 2008 they went back to silver and black as their color scheme. Four years later, they won the Stanley Cup and now they have won two cups in three years. I guess those colors are working pretty well for them.

The current Spurs logo and silver and black color scheme was adapted in 2002. A year later they won the NBA championship. It was the same year the Raiders went to the Super Bowl. In the 12 years prior to that, they had what was called their "Fiesta" colors in their logo which included green, red, and orange. They had one championship before the change to all silver and black and since then they have won four (2003, 05, 07, 14).

I will toss in the Chicago White Sox for the sake of argument. They last won a World Series in 2005. Though silver is not a dominant color in their uniform is black and white with silver trim so it's hard to say if they truly fit the criteria. They switched their current color scheme in 1991 and it took them 14 years to win a World Series. That may seem like a while but not when you consider prior to that their last World Series was in 1917. At this moment they are 33-37 - last place in the AL Central. Maybe they should consider making silver a bit more prominent in their color scheme? You just never know, it could be worth a shot.

If you want to get technical about it, if the Raiders were to somehow miraculously continue this silver and black success trend, the 2014 playoffs don't begin until 2015. But hey, it's an interesting correlation none the less. And if any of the Raiders players are superstitious, they could be thinking it's destiny. Even if it is a pretty incredible long shot, there seems to be something about teams that are wearing Silver & Black lately.

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