There are a pair of cargo pants I own that sit, friendless, in my dresser wondering why I’ve forsaken them. They were really great, too. Lots of pockets, especially those really large ones halfway down the pant leg where you could jam an entire Saturday edition of the Times if you were headed out to brunch. Thankfully, I live with a lady who tries to protect me from the villainy of the streets (i.e. those people who used to wince at me when I wore flannel back in the aughts). She instructed me to toss them. I don’t like throwing out perfectly good clothing, so I still have them, but they haven’t been worn since Mark Jackson was coaching the Warriors. That’s because cargo pants are passé these days. I have a few pairs of tapered trousers instead, and while they aren’t as easy to slide into in the morning, I can inconspicuously shuffle along St. Marks street without the NYU kids pointing and laughing. And that’s all I really ask for: to be able to move stealthily through the streets of the city I live in without feeling like a freak show of anachronistic sartorial choices.
I bring up this little anecdote as an analogy for the hot, then not, then sorta tepid career of short shorts on a basketball court. When I was growing up, Chris Webber was still buddies with Jalen Rose, and the Michigan pair teamed with Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson to revolutionize basketball fashion. Since then, short shorts were how you identified the chump on the court. Except, it didn’t seem very logical when you really looked at baggy shorts.
Sure, any pair of mesh shorts that fall more than two inches above your knee is coming too close to an exposed testicle, but the super baggy shorts that gained traction in the early ’90s with the Fab Five, and continued to be the predominant style well into the millennium, always annoyed me. If the shorts were too baggy — like I wore on my modified basketball team in the seventh grade — you couldn’t dribble between your legs as easily. They were impractical, but cool. Which do you think won out in the seventh grade?
So I labored in my attempts to perfect the Tim Hardaway crossover because of the exigencies of fitting in. Deep down, though, I always knew I was a shorts-at-knee-level-or-an-inch-above sorta guy. Then I started to see old basketball clips (my Old Man is old and loves basketball, and I had seemingly every basketball VHS available as a kid), and I noticed that the baggy short phase was just that: a phase. In the 1980s, they wore shorts that were so snug, I’m shocked there was never a Lenny Kravitz moment.
But while they looked odd, they also looked rather comfortable and people moved with the ball more easily. John Stockton could cross up an opponent (this is a bad example because John always played by-the-book basketball and almost never went between his legs unless he absolutely had to, and yet he’s somehow become the standard-bearer for short shorts — I blame the coastal bias against Utah) and it wouldn’t get lost in the balloon-like mesh material. Just look at Steph Curry’s Old Man and Magic below:
Incredibly short by today’s standards, and yet sorta comfortable, right? NBA short shorts weren’t speedos, so don’t think this is a European thing (I know Americans hate that). They were the proper length for basketball, even if it still looks odd to this day.
Yes, I joked about Lenny Kravitz’s exposed junk, but have you seen what sorta denim guys are rocking in contemporary society? I mentioned owning some tapered pants, but I see some jeans that are so tight now, you’re halfway convinced the person wearing them is just using that body paint SI models rock in the the swimsuit issue. It’s unseemly and no one can convince me it’s comfortable; the people wearing that sort of snug denim are as much a slave to fashion as I was on my modified basketball team. But the same cannot be said for shorter shorts on the NBA court.
I — like nearly all basketball fans — grew inured to the baggy shorts as I grew up because they were the standard-issue shorts in the NBA throughout my entire sentient life. Then, Chris Douglas-Roberts happened.
You probably only remember CDR on that John Calipari-coached Memphis team (starring Derrick Rose) that lost to Kansas in the 2008 title game. But he caught on in the league as a 3-and-D type who couldn’t really play defense or shoot the three. (The only year he shot above 33 percent from deep was his lone, standout season with the 2013-14 Charlotte then-Bobcats.) But he was waived by the Clippers after the 2014-15 season and was out of the league last season. He’s currently toiling in the D-League, hoping for another shot in the NBA, and because of his predilection for short shorts, I hope he gets it. But if CDR makes it back into the NBA, he might not be as explicitly different with those short shorts. They seem to be making a comeback of sorts.
https://twitter.com/alexiskmorgan/status/781304789225369604
In the last few weeks, as players have Snapped and Instagrammed their way through pre-preseason training, we’ve seen Dwyane Wade, “Birdman” Chris Andersen, Richard Jefferson and fashion focal point, James Harden, rocking short shorts.
It’s Harden who sticks out from that group, even if he was only wearing rolled up short shorts as a joke in practice. There’s a polarity to James these days because he carries a heavy offensive load and has been exposed in YouTube videos and SB Nation GIFs as something other than an elite defender. But even those people who hate Harden and think he initiates contact on every Euro-Step drive, there’s one thing we can all agree on: James Harden is cool.
It’s not because he dated Khloe Kardashian, though when you photobomb Kanye at your own birthday party, that’s pretty much the definition of cool in the year 2016. He’s not cool because he appears in the most surreal commercials around, though, that’s part of why I personally find him amusing. I mean, I’ve watched this loop 1,000 times probably:
https://media.giphy.com/media/l2JImFTNkf7uLg6Ji/giphy.gif
No, James Harden is just cool. Part of it certainly stems from the beard and how he was every basketblogger’s favorite player in his last year with Oklahoma City. But really it’s just that some people are naturally cool; James is one of them. He’s got his own absurdist lingo with his friends, and he does amazing things on the basketball court all while looking pretty unengaged and nonchalant. That’s sorta cool, especially to young kids; when you’re young, expending effort is the least cool thing in the world.
James is so cool, he might be able to single-handedly bring back short shorts, simply by wearing them as a joke in practice. Maybe really short shorts never come back, which is fine. But if Harden or Wade, or even Chris Douglas-Roberts have really started a trend, I for one will be happy.
I don’t want any of my possible progeny to grow up in a world where it’s still not cool to wear effective basketball shorts.
