10.19.2005

180 degrees of knowledge



Or, better late than never.

After outrageously attempting below to rationalize the dress code, I finally got around to reading the thing. And then, like a flash of madness, I realized that I'd been in denial: this is the worst thing that could happen to the association, especially from the FreeDarko perspective. I'm not so concerned about Iverson being able to stay real on the bench, or S-Jax's constitutional right to floss. It's those episodes in which dress actually transforms your view of someone, making you realize how much more there was to them than you'd ever imagined or suddenly unifies your disparate, ambiguous impressions of them. It may be a league based on style, but sometimes it takes an incredibly explicit cue or gesture to actually bring it all together/out for one single, individualized player; more often than not, and certainly more often than the spoken utterance, this happens in dress.

The minute I starting seeing the phrase "press conference" all up in the official wording, I immediately though of a crystalline moment in NBA Playoff history, that, while not readily available in photographic form on the internet, is at least somewhat well approximated below (minus the suit, of course):



If style is golden, then in these cases dress is that that first nugget found, usually by an unsuspecting pauper, in a Klondike stream.

HOWEVER: I could make a wholly similar argument for Draft Night suits, which perform this same function, more formally, for cats we're all bound to know all too well after their first few months in the league. And continue to stick in our collective craw like that, well after their initial usefulness should have receded.



I guess that's the real challenge here: can the players (and us fans) make every night Draft Night, style-wise? And even if anyone were up to it, would something be lost in the process--or a whole new world of exaggerated meaning unveiled?

P.S. This is Vlad's time to shine!!!!!!

8 Comments:

At 10/19/2005 5:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of vlad, the lakers know what they're doing management wise. Bringing in kareem to help out bynum and others and using vlade as a liaison and scout in europe is great. Think of the leverage they have with top european free agents, and teams in general. Great move on their part.

Also, that's what i have been wondering about the dress code. What are the chris webbers of the nba gonna do when they miss their annual 30-40 games a season? I think you'd have to wait at least 3 games to re-wear a suit. I don't know though. That's some larry david shit to deal with though.

 
At 10/19/2005 5:40 PM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

vlad, not vlade

 
At 10/19/2005 10:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

loads of info!!

i just don't like it cuz have you seen what people wear to ballgames? ITS NOT A FANCY NIGHT OUT DAVID, WE'RE ALL HERE TO HOLLER AND EAT NACHOS< NOBODY"S UPSET!!!

anyways there is a great tradition of basketball players dressing down, in high school its all big sweats and free tournament t-shirts and shit

football players are the ones wearing the coats on gameday, the bball coach doesn't wanna ruffle any feathers on his 1 or 2 actual players, u know, then he'd have to actually coach! (yeah i'm bitteR)

 
At 10/20/2005 10:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The coach at my high school made the players wear orange suits all day during school and at the game if they weren't playing. The coach wore a suit too. Hell, i coach 11-12 year old youth basketball and i wear a full suit and tie(and sometimes a fedora) to the games.

I know it was vlad, but it just reminded me.

 
At 10/20/2005 11:17 AM, Blogger CFunk28 said...

You guys are looking at this thing all wrong. The dress code is going to provide us with so much humor. Artest has already promised to wear suede and velvet. Think of all of the orange, yellow, and red suits. And just imagine Greg Ostertag arriving in one of his plaid jackets. Sweet.

 
At 10/20/2005 11:55 AM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

i'm looking at it as a win-win: you either get the suit game revisited, which i'm beginning to believe may be the ultimate in sartorial self-expression and self-identification, or weird subversion like artest is threatening to do. incidentally, if artest does this, it will be the unquestioned highlight of the season.

and i don't buy that espn piece that artest is turning into the next rodman. that's like saying freeway is the next chris cornell (that's right, a music metaphor).

 
At 10/20/2005 12:54 PM, Blogger glomgold said...

Pretty useless stuff. Still, I agree that within the context of these new rules a lot of players could decide to wear some seriously goofy clothing on the bench and give us all a laugh.

 
At 6/14/2013 6:14 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I have to admit that their suits are quite interesting but it don't look like with class. at Hostpph community really like it.

 

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