The sheer volume of content I consumed during the pandemic combined with my age prevents me from identifying the specific film, but there is a line of films that I always remember when I think about fashion:
“What’s wrong with her? She dresses like we’re in the 90s. It’s 2010 … she should dress like we’re in the 80s.”
I have certainly slaughtered the line since I entered “should dress like it’s the 80s movie line” in a search engine that failed to produce the desired results, but the sentiment remains the same. Fashion is cyclical and when a trend goes out of style it will inevitably return at some point in the future. Currently, the looser fashion of my teenage years has been shunned for tighter clothing.
Nowhere is this trend shown more clearly than in basketball culture, where today’s tighter, shorter shorts would have made you laugh outside the gym just a couple of decades earlier. But looking back at the baggy shorts of the 90s and early 2000s, famously worn in a big way by Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, and the University of Michigan Fab 5, I too can admit that things have escaped a bit. ‘of hand. There’s no better proof of baggy shark-jumping shorts than the now-famous photo of former NBA player TJ Ford during his rookie photo shoot with the Milwaukee Bucks.
The immediate thought in this day and age is that the image has been modified to make the shorts look wider than they were. No. This is a real thing that happened in 2003. In a recent interview with fellow former NBA player James Posey on BasketballNews.com, Ford provided the origin story of his viral photo:
“You have to do the beginner transition program. I don’t know what it was like for you, Poz, but they had the gym set up at the Knicks training facility. It’s where you did all the media and did all the video game stuff. and that’s where they gave everyone their uniforms. So when I got there, that’s what the Bucks sent me. I say, “Hey … What? What do you want me to do with this? “They said to me,” This is all we have. Either you wear them or you won’t have these pictures. “I say,” Shoot, I want my beginner card. I won’t miss it. ”So hey, we gotta do what we gotta do!
“So, imagine the shirt. The shirt is the same length as the shorts! I still have the shirt. I may have to do a Throwback on Thursday and actually wear it because I kept everything because I had to. Now, the great thing is that it was a long time ago . It was 2003. Every year when these new guys join the league, that picture keeps resurfacing and all these guys see it for the first time. Now, when I’m in the gym somewhere, Poz, it’s my baby. thing where everyone saw it. That’s what they want to show me! It’s nice, I like it. I guess it’s something in history, so I’ll take it. “
Ford told the same story on Twitter in 2018, saying he “must get mad at the Milwaukee Bucks” for giving him a more tailored uniform for a 7-foot center than a 6-foot point guard.
So that’s it. Ford wasn’t making a fashion statement – he was a team player and tried not to look like high maintenance before playing a single NBA game. It will be interesting to see which of today’s players are laughing 20 years from now at the softness of their shorts.
