Its beem 10 years since the AI rule aka the dress code has been implemented
- Thread starter Beerus
- Start date
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Breh I've seen before on this where for some reason brehs believe Euros only started following the NBA in the mid-00s when more Euro players were going there. That's total bs : it's the Dream Team that changed the perception and made the NBA big, not the fact that some random stiff no-name slovenian was on his way to being a bust on a lottery team.
Plus why the hell would someone in Madrid or in Vilnius care about how players ON THE BENCH are dressed
I think you misunderstood me. The folks in Madrid and Vilnius weren't the audience that Stern was concerned about when it comes to bench attire. You're right too about the NBA being big even prior to no name Slovenians coming into the league, however, it's a much bigger juggernaut now would you agree? Part of it's growth was in fact lightening up the shade of it's employees. There's a reason why some people can absolutely love Hockey and Football, but have mixed feelings about the NBA ever since it became "too influenced by Hip Hop." I've actually heard people say that and read that online in more words or less. Had Stern not addressed player attire and infused the league with some other peoples, the NBA wouldn't be as big as it is today. The NFL has done similar, the league approved durags come to mind.
mbewane
Knicks: 93 til infinity
Yeah indeed I kind of misunderstood your point. I understand what you mean and indeed the league is a much bigger juggernaut. I'm just not sure how much the dress code can be related to the rising importance of Europe for the NBA, if at all, I mean here a random 50 year-old white dude can watch a Memphis-Miami game without feeling ANY influence of the "Hip-hop world", and that has always been the case. I mean you only see bench players when cameras zoom on them...but ironically there is still hip-hop played during the game.
I guess what I'm saying is that people in Europe who watch the NBA would watch regardless of what players are wearing on the bench. Seriously, over here we just don't give a flying fukk about that, because it doesn't influence in any way the game, our experience of it, or our life in general. The vast majority of "thugs" in Europe don't or didn't wear baggy clothes or whatever : the vast majority of "perceived threatening people" dress like this
shyt don't like US "Hip-hop" wear at all (it's Lacoste stuff mostly) and has absolutely no link to the basketball world. If anything, they're linked with football, some at least.
Obviously it's different for white people in the US, because they live in an environment where the "Hip hop style" actually is a thing and I can understand that for some people who for whatever reason feel "threatened" by it, they don't want to see it on TV, and thus the NBA makes a business move to make it seem "less threatening".
But the NBA becoming more important in Europe (it already was at that point : Dream Team, Divac, Petro, Parker, Dirk, Pau, Gino having played in Italy, etc...had made the Euro market "ripe" long before the dress code happened) didn't have any impact on the decision of implementing a dress code. And if it had, it was stupid imo
