“Why is David Stern hatin’ on disco?”
NBA players should be thrilled.
They are getting a message from the league office that they are valued as professionals who should be taken seriously. A professional, if lax, dress code has been handed to them but commissioner David Stern’s memo has turned into an imbroglio.
While the paternalism from the NBA front office may be a bit heavy-handed, the baggy street wear of some of the players is an anathema of couture. It is unflattering to the male figure and as the role-models-they-hate-to-be, the players were sending a message to all the young ‘un’s out there that slovenly sartorial sensibilities are acceptable ones. Note the number of badly dressed and be-jerseyed men the next time you visit an airport or suburban TGIFriday’s. They didn’t pick that up from Miles Davis or JFK (although he is still on thin ice in my book for his refusal to wear a hat to his inauguration – the first President to do so).
Some players have called the new rules racist. It’s not my place to say they’re wrong but while the new rules may be slightly anachronistic – and even firmly rooted in western culture – the dress code is positively masculine, in my opinion.
In particular, the ban on excessive jewelry is being tenuously linked via hip-hop as an anti-African American one.
I don’t buy that.
In my mind, a man in gold chains conjures up the swarms of car dealers at the NADA convention each year: big necklaces, diamond man-rings, bleached teeth, and chemical bagged blondes on their arms.
Gold chains are a bit too prevalent (unfortunately) to be endemic to one particular subsection of pop culture like hip-hop.
I like the way Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning put it:
“If you look at that as racist then you don’t understand the corporate world,” he said Wednesday.
[…]
“Now if he would have said something about the way we wear our hair or what have you, that has some ethnic connections to it. But he’s telling us to appropriately dress in a way to where it reflects this particular corporation.”
And given that it’s the corporate group sales and season ticket holders who are the big customers of this particular corporation, it makes sense in my mind that the corporation’s rep’s dress like their clients.
NFL coaches have a dress code: they have to wear official NFL gear when on the sideline. No more Tom Landries with their smart jackets and authoritarian hats. Instead, they have elastic-waist bands or drawstrings and clothes with thousands of tiny holes, gauche, gaudy logos, and obnoxious colors and stripes.
NBA players are blessed. Not just by their skills, fame and money, but by a dress code that lets them express themselves in a masculine and professional fashion.
December 14th, 2007 by 
DirtyD 
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