I’m getting too old for this.  Growing up professional athletes wore two types of clothes in public, uniforms or suits.  Getting on or off the team bus, at the hotels and in interviews all the players wore suits and did their best to look like professionals and respected businessmen.  They wore uniforms when they were playing the game.  Now there’s no telling what they’ll show up in public wearing.

The NBA is the worst of the major leagues. Maybe it’s the Dennis Rodman legacy.  Or it could be that for the last seven or eight years the NBA has hire nothing but thugs to play in its league.  Probably more of the latter than the former.  When the owners decided to cater to the hip-hop world they knew what they were getting.  

Wilbon makes a point that the dress code coming down from the league offices is being driven by money.  Money in the form of corporate sponsors that don’t want to invest in players that dress like bums.  He’s got a point there, but I think it goes deeper than that.

I think the league may have finally gotten tired of its reputation and decided to clean its act up.  Since the owners can’t control who these players really are inside, they can only try to clean up how they look.  If nothing else, the owners can at least employ well dressed thugs.

Nobody, corporate sponsor or Regular Joe, wants to shell out a hundred plus dollars a seat to watch thugs miss rebounds.  Changing what they wear coming off the team bus is simply a first step in changing the perceptions around the game.  The NFL has more players with arrest records and drug problems than any other pro sports league, but they have a much cleaner public image.  There are lots of reasons for that, and it starts with the players attempting to behave like professionals in public.

But of course the thugs are rebelling.  They are too dumb to realize that the NBA is in decline because of their thuggish ways, and ghetto attitudes.  Maybe if more of the NBA’s stars had, you know like gone to college, then they would understand something of the world around them.  They think that as long as the bangers and homies are down with what they wear that ‘The Man’ should leave them alone.  Just keep those checks coming and don’t expect anything in return.  The NBA is a league after all in which the star player for a team can choke the coach during practice and get by with it.  No fines, no criminal charges, just sit out of practice for a couple of days and all will be forgiven.  

Why should the owners complain?  All they are getting is what they have been paying for the past ten years.

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