Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook
Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.
As the NBA begins its season, the institution of an off-the-court, business
casual dress code has put the league's players — and extremely casual Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban — in a sartorial quandary. What should the players — and Cuban — wear instead of the jerseys, particularly the old-time jerseys, they prefer?
Unfortunately for them, Mitchell & Ness Nostalgia Co. sells nothing that would conform to the JC Penney-oxford-and-Dockers combination the NBA has mandated. Mitchell & Ness, a century-old Philadelphia sportswear company, pioneered the "authentic" throwback jersey, getting the colors just right enough to get away with charging $420 for a 1978 Washington Bullets Wes Unseld road uniform. Mitchell & Ness' success in throwbacks, not only for the NBA, but for other pro and college sports, is due in no small part to NBA players wearing their gear.
While this puts the athlete in a bind, it puts Mitchell & Ness in one, too. The company does not make throwback business casual. It has not devoted efforts to re-create the 1982 Izod line.
And would that be worth the effort? NBA Commissioner David Stern instituted the dress code so the league's mostly black players wouldn't seem so threatening to its mostly older white high-paying customers. But while the league's youngest
fans find it exciting to copy their heroes in wearing throwback jerseys, it
might test the limits of their fandom to have NBA players dressed in throwback
alligator shirts with the collars flipped up.
One solution will allow NBA players to strut their style, and allow Mitchell & Ness to make a lot of money when young fans start playing copycat: throwback NBA draft suits.
If you're an NBA fan, you get excited about the league's annual draft of amateur players not because you know who any of them are — with so many players being drafted from high school or overseas leagues, you don't. No, the biggest excitement comes from seeing what wacky-looking suits they're going to wear.
Joan and Melissa Rivers are really wasting their time waiting by the Oscar and Emmy red carpets screaming "Who are you wearing!" to passing starlets. Instead, they should walk around the athletes' green room on draft day, asking questions such as, "Excuse me, Chris Paul, but does Al Capone know you stole his jacket?"
As you might have gathered, the draft suit has made its way into the
so-bad-its-good category — much like many of the jerseys Mitchell & Ness
sells. Especially the 1972 Pete Maravich, puke-green Atlanta Hawks road jersey with "Pistol," his nickname, below the number on the back side. (A bargain at $300!)
With that in mind, if Mitchell & Ness created "authentic" throwbacks of the most god-awful NBA draft suits, players would start wearing them, and fans would
start buying them.
And suddenly the NBA would have "retro draft suit" nights just like it
piggybacked on the company's success to have retro jersey nights now. One night
the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban included, would all have to dress in Samaki
Walker's classic 1996 white
suit and hat combination. The Denver Nuggets would have Jalen Rose Draft
Suit night, with everyone having to wear the 1994 screaming red pinstripe suit that made Rose look like a pulsating, pinstriped bottle of ketchup. Imagine Ron Artest looking like a prom fashion victim in Chuck Person's 1987 white tuxedo with red cummerbund and bow tie on the Indiana Pacers' retro suit night.
However, Mitchell & Ness might never see a Utah Jazz retro draft suit night if it reproduces Karl Malone's weekend country club-golfer outfit from 1985. Malone's blah-blue jacket, white cloth tie, generic-blue oxford shirt and white beltless trousers — all too small — is probably a little too much like what the NBA wants its players to look like off the court.
E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.
