What Does Basketball Fashion Have to Do With Basketball?

Jackson broke up his catalog decade by decade and the results track with whatever emergent youth culture was ascendant and with whatever men—Black men, especially—were trying to project at the time. In the ’60s, we see a lot of suits and ties, a reflection of the Civil Rights movement and Black struggle for acceptance in white America. In the ’70s, the seriousness of that moment recedes and color blossoms across the page. See Kareem Abdul-Jabbar draped in a dashiki, Bill Walton sporting overalls, Wilt Chamberlain in a silk top, three buttons undone, sporting a massive medallion. 

No one in history got more and wilder fits off than Knicks guard Walt Frazier during this era. He appears in these pages sporting a turtleneck, a gold medallion, a Spanish-style wide brim hat, and an honest to god cape, and, somehow, it all works. For more of Frazier’s work in the aesthetic space, check out his 1974 book Rockin’ Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool, where Frazier tells the reader exactly how to rock a cape, and also how to defend every NBA starting guard from the 1973 season. 

The ‘90s and the early aughts ushered in a series of baggier and baggier fits. Michael Jordan’s gigantic, nearly Byrne-esque, suits really stick out at first, until Iverson comes along and inspires the entire league with hip-hop aesthetics. In the wake of the Malice at the Palace—a massive brawl during a Pistons-Pacers game that spilled out into the stands—NBA Commissioner David Stern, in a paternalistic and also pretty-racist move to improve the perception of the league in the eyes of white America, employed a strict dress code on players’ game day fits.