One of the best things about getting older (as opposed to normal aging, where you simply age) is the moment when the knowledge that there is nothing new under the sun becomes something akin to an instinct. Most notable is the realization that everything hailed as the next frontier in human advancement is actually just an old idea with newer, better special effects. It is usually applied by people who are too young or uninterested to know any better. In the case of our new war, that effect comes from people being too old and lazy to think of other ways to distract the public. But only a fool would mistake this for something new.
For example, Floyd Mayweather Jr., now 49, is pushing for a rematch of his 2015 welterweight title fight with Manny Pacquiao, now 47. You both need attention and no need for extra money. Most fights are fought for that reason, at least to some extent. But even the surface novelty is thin. Young people imagine this is just trying to get a seat on Jake Paul’s stunt fight gravy train. In fact, it’s just an exaggerated version of MTV. Celebrity DeathmatchOnly if slow punches were thrown by real people instead of claymation figures. For all you slack-jawed college mutants out there, Clay is the CGI of the past.
This brings us, in a much scaled-down version, to the issue of dress codes for NBA coaches. Yes, this is a colossal defeat from a war that no one asked for or tried to justify, and no one asked for or wanted to see in the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight either. But enough about The Athletic and its series Peak, which covers the mental side of sports. Rustin Dodd poured over 1,100 words about Hall of Fame coach, menswear icon and Miami Heat CEO Pat Riley, urging coaches to return to the field in suits and ties. Yes. Even when New Orleans plays Sacramento on Thursday night. Perhaps especially so at that time. For Riley, it’s a matter of principle.
Riley was known as an average player by NBA standards, a great coach (when he had his best players, as he usually was), and a perennial executive (when in doubt, he left the Knicks and got a real job). His entire public image was shaped by a chance meeting with fashion designer Giorgio Armani in 1981 before defining his career as head coach of the Showtime Lakers. That was the year Magic Johnson and Larry Bird shaped the league. The sheer power of charisma saved it from cultural oblivion. It’s a formula of repurposing something old into something new that the NBA has tried to mixed success ever since. This achievement earned Riley a statue outside Crypto.com Arena, which was dedicated last month. Of course, his suit and tie were impeccably welded.
Riley’s theory of suits is brief, expressed in Dodd’s work in his own words and supported by a variety of scholars. “I think audiences want to see someone next to them who looks like a leader, dresses like a leader, and acts like a leader.” It contains a concept that was first tested 60 years ago. Costumes are part of leadership, some leadership costumes are more inspirational than others, leadership isn’t what it used to be because kids don’t respect adults, and wearing costumes can help prevent the breakdown of standards that leads to passive (and sometimes active) player stubbornness like Kawhi Leonard or Jonathan Kuminga. Simply put, players won’t beat themselves up if coaches take them out of their team-issued gym uniforms and put them back in coat-and-tie attire. The road back to the earlier, more hierarchical and respectful world begins in the tailor shop.
It’s all part of our tired and confused society’s attempt to give power to pretense. The Riley Look is definitely a signature statement piece, and there’s something eternally charming about seeing a coach in an expensive suit go all out on the sidelines after receiving a missed call. There’s nothing funny about watching a man in Sunday gear swing his tie so hard it hits him in the face after committing a shooting foul. A grown man wearing a moisture-wicking polyester blend isn’t necessarily classier than when he’s angry, but the point is that classiness isn’t really the thing to strive for here. Proof: Despite coaches being the driving force behind dressing up, no one is rushing to buy clothes from Mark Daigneault’s line.
A 2015 study conducted by a group of scholars from Columbia and Cal State-Northridge advanced the notion that looking like your boss helps you become the boss you want to be like. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ve addressed the scientific theory that coaches’ more casual sideline workout wear, which became a league guideline during the pandemic and has stuck in the years since, suggests that expensive clothes are helpful because of COVID. This goes against the notion that coaches in tracksuits look like equipment managers trying extra hard to stand out on TV. Coaches don’t want to wear suits anyway. Rick Carlisle said public opinion in the coaches’ association was “85 to 90 percent” against bringing back the sideline suits. “It’s a challenge, because quarter zippers are very comfortable and very easy to put on,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers told The Athletic.
Don’t misunderstand. It’s a fun topic to chew on on a down day like today or when New Orleans plays Sacramento (don’t miss it on NBA League Pass). Riley’s effort to redefine his style to match what made him famous 40 years ago is a noble enough pursuit for anyone at his stage of life, and it has the added benefit of being a much more benign topic than American foreign policy mimicking the hot trends of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. To be fair, Riley is actually appealing to the “audience” rather than the employees here.
But either way, it’s a reminder that, as in the 1960s, these anti-political aesthetic discontents arise when older generations try to push back against the younger crowd. At some point, the coach who appears to work for the Champs is almost identical to the coach in the suit, but is still just another person that the highest-paid players will ignore. Today’s Titans will be tomorrow’s footnotes. Because that’s how it’s always worked. Who sits in a bar cheating on Winston Churchill anymore? Thirty years from now, the same number of people will be sitting in a virtual bar talking about Andy Reid with their friends. Churchill looked like Monopoly Man. Reed looks like a janitor. In the end, we may find, as we did half a century ago, that it is the people in uniform who actually make careers. At some point, the next generation will learn it again for the first time. But not the last. In the meantime, it’s still there Celebrity Deathmatch To help make it all make sense.
