NBA sartorial style goes from gangsta to hipster

In October 2005, the NBA instituted a dress code for players. No longer would knee-length t-shirts and sweat suits be game-day or bench attire. The move brought cheers and jeers from across the hoops landscape. Some called it an affront to hip hop culture while others said it showed respect for the game. Six years later, there probably isn’t even a need for the dress code because, as Wesley Morris points out in a great piece at Grantland called "The Rise of the NBA Nerd," hip hop culture has changed its own dress code.

Morris points out how the emerging of Kanye West "ushered in the chic of the black nerd. He cleared a safe space for narcissism and self-deconstruction; for singing rappers with names like Drake, J. Cole, and Tyler, The Creator; for the Roots to be Jimmy Fallon’s house band; for the threat in the music to move from the street to the psyche. Hip-hop had already begun to splinter into a land of a million mixtapes before West’s arrival. And with that shattering, black male style was transitioning away from Sean Combs’ ‘Puffy’ era gilded age, with its plushness, flamboyance, glamour, and actionable danger."

The Basketball Jones deftly tackled the issue last month, with a hard-hitting report asking, "Who is the NBA’s biggest hipster?" But let’s not pretend this is a new phenomenon. The NBA has a long history of players who were leaders of or even way ahead of their sartorial time. Let’s just hope the league doesn’t go for throwback shorts.