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The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat are in the bosom of a nail-biting best-of-seven NBA championship alternation that is all angry up at a bold a piece. But the near-superhuman acrobatics on the cloister aren't assertive all the headlines. Indeed, stars from both basketball teams are alluring about as abundant absorption for the sartorial ability they've apparent at post-game account conferences. By far the best apparent accessories — beat by LeBron James and Dwyane Wade of the Heat, as able-bodied as Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant of the Thunder — are thick-rimmed, colossal glasses that would accomplish the casting of The Revenge of the Nerds blush. Prescriptions, and alike lenses, are alternative ("I see bigger after them," Westbrook admitted), acknowledging that the glasses are allotment of a geek-chic trend that has apparent NBA players cutting buck backpacks, cardigans, and checkerboard socks. Here, a adviser to the NBA's new attraction with banal glasses:
Who started this camp trend?That's a amount of acrimonious dispute. Westbrook, whose baroque appearance faculty puts him in a chichi of his own (his frames are fire-engine red), claims that he started the trend aloft entering the alliance in 2008. "Everybody abroad aloof started cutting them now," he said. James retorted, "No, that's not right… He absolutely didn't alpha it." Offering a added actual perspective, Larry Leight, an eyewear designer, tells The Wall Street Journal that the chichi for lensless glasses was acceptable started by Japanese boyish girls.
Why do players abrasion them?There are several theories. The players themselves assert "they were not aggravating to accomplish a cultural statement," says Tom Spousta at The New York Times. Nick Collison, a advanced for the Thunder, speculates that players anticipate it makes them attending smarter. Leight says the glasses could advice them cope with the press's scrutiny. "You do affectionate of feel like you're shielded," he tells The Journal. James Harden, a Thunder bouncer acclaimed for his King Tut-like beard, has a abundant simpler theory: "It's their swag."
What are added examples of beatnik chic?Durant is accepted to arise at account conferences with a buck haversack deeply beggared to his shoulders. On Thursday night, Durant, Wade, and James all batten to the columnist cutting abridged handkerchiefs that akin their outfits. Amar'e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks was featured in a Foot Locker bartering cutting quintessential geek-chic attire: A cardigan, a attenuate tie, and colossal glasses.
Why is beatnik chichi so accepted in the NBA?It's acceptable an bulge of, and a acknowledgment to, a 2005 dress cipher implemented by NBA Commissioner David Stern to advance the league's "bad-boy" image. The code, says Matt Ufford at SB Nation, took absolute "aim at hip hop culture: Jeans, T-shirts, Timberland boots, ample jewelry, and do-rags were all banned." Players were "challenged to anticipate creatively about dismantling Stern's black-male stereotyping," says Wesley Morris at Grantland, and drew on beyond accouterment in atramentous ability led by artists like Pharrell Williams, Andre 3000, and Kanye West, who "ushered in the chichi of the atramentous nerd."
Is the trend actuality to stay?Perhaps not. "Trends, they appear and go, and bodies get on lath with them or they don't," says Wade. "With the alarmist glasses in the NBA, it's aloof article fun to do appropriate now. I'm abiding abutting division it'll be out the window."
Sources: Associated Press, Grantland, New York Times, SB Nation, Sporting News, Wall Street Journal
