The Miami Heat Dropped Brand-New Jerseys Just in Time For Grand Theft Auto VI

Growing up in Oakland, Miami Heat forward Keshad Johnson and his brother Kenny used to sneak away from their parents to play Grand Theft Auto. “It caused some fights between me and him on turns,” Johnson says. “We used to play that if you crash the car, you gotta pass the sticks.”For many of us who came of age in the early aughts, sneaking away from our parents to play GTA was a rite of passage. And since the first edition of the game dropped in 1997, at least part of the thrill of this fictional world was often tied to the clandestine affair. But next week, Johnson won’t be hiding from anybody. Instead, he’ll be part of a once-in-a-lifetime Grand Theft Auto experience when he and his Heat teammates take the court in special-edition Vice City jerseys inspired by the game.Grand Theft Auto VI, Vice City, launches on November 19th. But the night before, when the Heat and superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo take on his former team, the Milwaukee Bucks, they'll be ringing in what is by most accounts the biggest video game launch of all time with a special event that only Rockstar Games and the Heat could pull off. “My whole family is trying to get a Vice City jersey,” Johnson said when we spoke last weekend.“We're bringing sports and entertainment together in a way that's never been done,” adds Miami Heat Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Alvarez. “And we're going to deliver an experience that no one has actually had at an NBA game.”Courtesy of Miami HeatCourtesy of Miami HeatMore on that in a second. But let’s start with the kits: all black, with bright pink accents that pop like neon signs in the South Beach sky. The word “Heat” is splashed across the front. “It's kind of like the outlaw type vibe,” Johnson said. “That's what we want to give when we're on the court.”Hidden inside the letters and jersey numbers is a map of Miami streets. They were designed by Nike and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack, whose logos are featured on the jersey and shorts. As the whole campaign makes clear, details matter.“I feel like Vice City has its own fashion culture,” says Heat star Bam Adebayo.The jerseys will be available for purchase on game night at the arena, where fans will be transported into the video game itself upon entering the Kaseya Center, whose plaza will be made over with a light-blue Ferrari and turquoise Chevrolet Monte Carlo, just two of the sports cars one can drive in GTA.A sign hoisted atop the arena will read “Welcome to Vice City.” In fact, Mitchell was late to practice one day because his usual route was blocked by a helicopter that’d been deployed to help install it. “It shows how much time and effort they're trying to put into this new game,” Mitchell says. “This is probably gonna be the greatest game of all time.”Though everyone involved has kept tight-lipped about what happens once inside the arena, fans attending Heat games have already been able to order burgers from Burger Shot and chicken from Cluckin' Bell, two fictional fast-food chains in the Grand Theft Auto universe. “It's a full 360 experience. I can't wait for people to really understand what that means,” Alvarez said, coyly. “And that's all I can say about it.”Courtesy of Miami HeatOne can understand the secrecy, since the Heat’s Vice City takeover has been two years in the making. It all started when Rockstar Games dropped the trailer for Vice City in December 2023. A digital Kaseya Center can be seen in the first 30 seconds.“When we saw that we were in the trailer, we thought we should figure something out,” Alvarez recalls. “Because we've been synonymous with the word Vice since 2017."The Heat launched the Miami Vice campaign in 2017 with its acclaimed Original Vice jerseys that set the standard for NBA teams launching City Edition jerseys. Those campaigns went beyond the uniforms and included local activations like custom license plates and a fashion line created in collaboration with local artists. Over the years, the Heat launched five separate Vice jerseys, each campaign expanding on previous ones. Ask those with the Heat, and they’d agree that this latest installment is the biggest one yet. “It feels like all of it built up to this,” Alvarez said.To be clear, the Heat don’t look at this as an extension of their own Vice line. Rather, this is meant to be as exclusive as any streetwear brand launch. Also, it’s not easy to transport fans into a video game every single night. Go big, then go home.Meanwhile, Rockstar has infiltrated Miami, turning the city that inspired Vice City into Vice City itself. Burger Shot came to life through a collaboration with Skinny Louie, a local smash-burger joint that has rebranded their brick-and-mortar (and arena) locations for the launch. Rockstar Games has activations throughout the city, including in Downtown, Little Haiti and the famous Wynwood Walls. It’s an Inception-style, video game outside the video game-type thing that crescendos with the Heat game on the eve of the Grand Theft Auto VI launch.Players got their first look at the jerseys and the campaign during a team meeting in early October. After hours of presentations about business operations, media responsibilities and other team matters, the energy in the room sparked when Alvarez took the microphone and showed the first Vice City slide. The players locked in. A few even stood up and cheered.Mitchell, for his part, was taken back to his childhood, when he would come home from his grandma’s house and play Grand Theft Auto until it was time for bed. For a while, Mitchell became obsessed, playing GTA while other popular games like Call of Duty and NBA 2K collected dust.“I just played that all the time, doing missions, but also just running around,” he remembers. “It's kind of like your own world in a way.”And next week, he’ll get to enter it IRL.Courtesy of Miami Heat