New NBA standards a needed change

With the start of the season just one week away, NBA players have many deep concerns about the upcoming season. Zone defense? Stopping the Spurs? Phil Jackson's comeback?

No, what will they wear?

As you've probably heard, the NBA has adopted a dress code, effective this season. In: sports jackets, shoes and socks for un-uniformed players on the bench. Out: sunglasses worn indoors, sleeveless shirts, shorts, T-shirts, chains and do-rags when they're traveling to and from work.

Now if they can just do something about the attire of sports writers (no visible mustard and ketchup stains allowed), they'll really clean up this league.

Predictably, some NBA players are upset about the dress code. I can understand this. Why are they treating them like a bunch of kids, I wondered? Then I remembered: They are a bunch of kids.

The NBA has an image problem, if you haven't noticed, from their boorish behavior to their dress. If you had only two words to describe the style of dress in the NBA, that word would be "street punk." So the league, which once airbrushed the tattoos from a picture of Allen Iverson, becomes the first major professional sports league to adopt a dress code.

Gee, we sure will miss the sideways hats, the gold chains, the up-yours sunglasses and the jeans big enough to include a guest room. Somehow when Michael Jordan handed off to the next generation of players, they noted the six rings but missed the sharp attire and manners.

Sometimes people just need to be saved from themselves.

Minnesota guard Wally Szczerbiak, lamenting the dress code, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "If you tune in to the MTV Video Music Awards, that's all that is driving our culture, age 15 to 30. You look at the top 20 songs on radio, half of them are hip-hop. . . . If they are trying to weed out hip-hop, that's a big part of this league and a big part of this generation."

Memo to Wally World: Fifteen-year-olds aren't buying tickets to NBA games; their fathers are. When teenagers start buying $100 tickets with their pizza delivery earnings, then NBA players can start appealing to that audience.

Besides, Szczerbiak has the tail wagging the dog. NBA players set the trend for kids, not vice versa.

Szczerbiak doesn't get it; Phil Jackson does. "The players have been dressing in prison garb for the last five or six years," Jackson told the L.A. Times. "It's like gangsta, thuggery stuff. It's time (for a dress code)."