NBA: The Dress Code

There is a new dress code in the NBA, handed down by Commish David Stern. Players must be wearing dress slacks (including nice jeans), a shirt with a collar, no hats, no medallions outside the clothes, no sunglasses, and no headphones.

Many players (Alan Iverson, Marcus Camby, and even Tim Duncan) have come out against this new policy. Others (Lebron James at least) have said they are fine with it. My opinion is that the NBA has the right to do this, but why would they?

The NBA has the right to require this. This is no different than if your employer requires you to dress a certain way. Why does the world have a professional dress code? That's another issue. But, in this society, how you dress says something about you as a professional, and any employer has the right to ask (require) that his/her employees dress up to any standard. If you don't like it, quit and find another job.

Further more, the NBA players union agreed to this dress code months ago. If you are an NBA player, you should have been complaining then, not now.

"I dress to make myself comfortable," Iverson told the Philadelphia Daily News. "I really do have a problem with it. ... It's just not right. It's something I'll fight for."

I am sorry Alan, but it is right. Most everyone else in the country has some regulation on what they wear to work. If you can't handle this dressing, find another job that will let you dress however you want. But dressing for work isn't about being comfortable. It's about dressing as the employer has set, and then trying to be comfortable.

Nuggets center Marcus Camby, who will earn $9.3 million this season, suggested the NBA provide a stipend to help players pay for their dress clothes. What?! What an idiot.

In response to the players concerns, Stern said, "Well, the job description has changed."

The fact is, Stern is right. He has every right to change the the job description. But...why? Why would he want to?

The only answer has to be that he is trying to change the league's 'hip-hop' image. But why? He wants to market the league to a more upper class, 'whiter' audience. But here's the thing. People don't want to watch basketball because they look at the players and say, "That guy looks like me!"

Furthermore, if the NBA wants to distance itself from this 'hip-hop' image, it could start by no longer playing rap music throughout the actual games...

---

Several players have brought up the issue of race. And, in many respects, they have a point. Getting rid of of elements of 'hip-hop culture' such as large medallions (bling) and head-wear (stocking caps) are elements of 'black culture'. So is this move an attempt to make the players look more professional? Or is it a move to make it look less 'hip-hop/black'?

This raises an interesting question (that I'm actually not going to go into now...that's for another post):
Standards of business dress and dressing nice in general were/are set by the upper class and the employers, and at this time in the world, that is a mostly white class. Actually, there are a lot of places to go from here...and I'm just gonna drop it...

---

So why the dress code? I'm not really sure. Does the league have the right? Yes. Do they look bad for pushing this for no reason? Yes. Is the player's outrage legit? No. Do they look like babies? Yes.

Does this issue deserve so much attention? No. I'd actually rather read about baseball...