DeShawn is deep in sports duds

His first throwback purchase was a $250 Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, and — much like someone else in the news lately — it got him in trouble.

DeShawn Stevenson's decision to wear one of the high-dollar fashion industry's hottest trends — a retro sports jersey — while traveling to a road game last season seemed innocuous enough.

But it didn't go over well with Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan, who wasn't real keen on the notion of one of his NBA players wearing Monroe's old New York Knicks uniform top — even if Earl the Pearl hasn't played since 1980, which happens to be one year before the 21-year-old Stevenson was born.

"I didn't think it was a big deal," Stevenson says now. "I didn't think coach would get mad."

But he did.

The conversation, as Stevenson recalls, went like this:

Sloan: "Don't you think that's a little inappropriate?"

Stevenson: "No. Why?"

Sloan: "Because it's the Knicks."

Stevenson: "Well, you know, he's an old player."

A year or so later, throwbacks are all the craze — especially for decidedly wealthy, or soon-to-be wealthy, young men like Stevenson and a certain Ohio prep sensation named LeBron James.

In Utah, Stevenson, who makes a little under $1 million per season on his current rookie contract, figures he has more than $100,000 of personal wardrobe budget invested in the jerseys.

The apparel isn't cheap, soaring to well over $400 — with value dependent in part on what athlete, team and sport are represented, and whether or not it was actually game-worn.

In Ohio, James — the potential No. 1 overall pick in this year's NBA draft — has had his season curtailed by the Ohio High School State Athletic Association.

On the heels of deciding the youth broke no rules by driving a $52,000 Hummer H2 sport-utility vehicle that his mother gave to him as an 18th birthday gift after purchasing it by securing a bank loan, that body ruled last Friday that the Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High senior is ineligible.

His indiscretion: accepting two retro jerseys worth a combined $845, which is in violation of an association rule preventing students from capitalizing on their athletic fame by accepting gifts valued over $100.