Posts Tagged Oklahoma City Thunder

A glasses-empty look at the NBA’s silliest trend – Chicago Sun-Times

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Editorial, Opinion, Social, Society on June 17, 2012


A glasses-empty look at the NBA’s silliest trend

BY RICK TELANDER rtelander@suntimes.com June 16, 2012

Updated: June 17, 2012 2:36AM 

Story Image  

Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook, left, and small forward Kevin Durant react during a news conference after Game 2 of the NBA finals basketball series, Thursday, June 14, 2012, in Oklahoma City. The Heat won 100-96. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) 


We’ll start today’s Stew with eyeballs as our focus.

No, not ‘‘eyeballs,’’ as in, ‘‘How many eyeballs did your blog get?’’ But the actual squishy, oblong things stuck in your face like a pair of martini olives.

Glasses were invented to help people whose eyeballs don’t function well. So it seems crazy to me — or cray ,as they now say — that incredibly gifted, finely tuned, perfectly sighted NBA players (and other pros) now wear glasses as a fashion statement.

They wear frames with clear glass in them, or no glass at all, missing only the rubber nose and furry eyebrows to be Groucho Marx on Halloween. Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook — you see them in front of microphones, adjusting their fake, designer-styled eyeglasses like so many Clark Kents, Steve Urkels, Mr. Magoos.

Am I the only who thinks this is crazy?

The Wall Street Journal did some research and contends the style was started by teenage Japanese girls. Their lensless fakies didn’t interfere with their uber-long false eyelashes. Yo, dudes!

Fashion must change; that is an absolute. Otherwise we’d still be wearing loin cloths and rodent sandals. There would be no Chanel, Rolex, Gucci. People like Kim Kardashian would wander naked and insane because their closets would be empty and their minds emptier.

But fellas, please. What’s next, faux hearing aids?

Or, if you’re all in, might I suggest something really cool from the world of the disabled? Designer wheelchairs.

◆ SAN ANTONIO SPURS GUARD Tony Parker recently was spotted wearing sunglasses, which protected one of his eyeballs, which had been scratched during a brawl at a nightclub in New York. Parker was there with his friend, performer Chris Brown, and bottles and bodies started flying, and somebody punched him in the face, scratching his retina. The dispute apparently had to do with Brown and his arch-enemy, Drake, also at the club. This enmity, for those of you who are uninformed, is much the way Wolverine and Sabretooth feel about each other .

At any rate, Parker will miss the first week of the French national team’s practice as it prepares for the London Olympics.

I mean, I think his sunglasses were real.

◆ Jerry Sandusky.

I hope the prosecution has rested its case against the former Penn State assistant football coach as the sexual-abuse trial moves into its second week.

If we hear much more about the screams and the horrors of young boys under Sandusky’s control, in that seemingly soundproof basement, we will have to consider this man in the pantheon with monsters like John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer, minus the corpses and cannibalism, of course.

◆ I watched the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley fight last weekend on pay-per-view, and I found it astounding the split decision went to challenger Bradley. I thought you had to truly rough up the champ to win his crown, and Bradley certainly didn’t do that.

But maybe the broadcast team, which included Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman, might want to get an expert in-house judge other than Harold Lederman, who confidently had Pacquiao winning 11 of the 12 rounds, thereby making the TV audience feel the match was a rout.

It was not. To this layman’s eyes, Pacquiao clearly won seven or eight of the rounds, maybe nine, with the others being up for grabs, depending on what you’re looking for in a fighter — aggression, power punches, footwork, etc.

But I saw Roy Jones Jr. lose a bout even though he beat the snot out of South Korean boxer Park Si-Hun in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and that atrocity made the Pacquiao-Bradley decision look ho-hum. Of course, the Jones decision was corrupt. Judges were on the take. But that was just one of many horrendous fight decisions in modern times.

So why the surprise over this recent debacle? This is boxing, baby, home of Bob Arum, Don King and more unregulated divisions and federations than you can count.

Enjoy.

◆ Why do basketball players step off the free-throw line and slap palms with every teammate after missing or making the first of two free throws?

Anybody? Please?

◆ Bruce Jenner was a star athlete — for a brief spell in 1976, the greatest in the world. After years of grueling work, he won the Montreal Olympics decathlon, setting a world record.

I used to idolize him, even had a photo of him with his arms raised, jogging in triumph.

Now? Jenner’s a plastic-faced prop, the put-upon husband/dad on the ‘‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’’ reality show. His wife, Kris Jenner, and his girls run around him like so many bimbos from hell. Meanwhile, Bruce stays calm and flies his model helicopters in the backyard.

‘‘Bruce Jenner has taken it upon himself to rescue his ridiculous clan by doing what none of its other members will do,’’ writes Chris Jones in a feature on Jenner in this month’s Esquire. ‘‘He has elected to lose.’’

Sigh.

 A glasses-empty look at the NBA’s silliest trend – Chicago Sun-Times.

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The NBA’s geek-chic craze: What’s with the nerdy glasses? – The Week

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Entertainment, Social, Society on June 17, 2012


The NBA’s geek-chic craze: What’s with the nerdy glasses?

Post-game news conferences have turned into veritable fashion shows, and the hottest accoutrement are oversized, Urkel-esque specs

POSTED ON JUNE 15, 2012

Flaunting a curiously cool bespectacled style, Oklahoma City Thunder all-stars Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant speak to the press Thursday.

Flaunting a curiously cool bespectacled style, Oklahoma City Thunder all-stars Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant speak to the press Thursday. Photo: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

 

The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat are in the midst of a nail-biting best-of-seven NBA championship series that is all tied up at a game a piece. But the near-superhuman acrobatics on the court aren’t dominating all the headlines. Indeed, stars from both basketball teams are attracting nearly as much attention for the sartorial flair they’ve exhibited at post-game news conferences. By far the most conspicuous accessories — worn by LeBron James and Dwyane Wade of the Heat, as well as Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant of the Thunder — are thick-rimmed, oversized glasses that would make the cast of The Revenge of the Nerds blush. Prescriptions, and even lenses, are optional (“I see better without them,” Westbrook admitted), confirming that the glasses are part of a geek-chic trend that has seen NBA players wearing schoolboy backpacks, cardigans, and plaid socks. Here, a guide to the NBA’s new obsession with nerdy glasses:

Who started this bizarre trend? 
That’s a matter of heated dispute. Westbrook, whose flamboyant fashion sense puts him in a class of his own (his frames are fire-engine red),claims that he started the trend upon entering the league in 2008. “Everybody else just started wearing them now,” he said. James retorted, “No, that’s not right… He definitely didn’t start it.” Offering a deeper historical perspective, Larry Leight, an eyewear designer, tells The Wall Street Journal that the craze for lensless glasses was likely started by Japanese teenage girls.

Why do players wear them? 
There are several theories. The players themselves insist “they were not trying to make a cultural statement,” says Tom Spousta at The New York Times. Nick Collison, a forward for the Thunder, speculates that players think it makes them look smarter. Leight says the glasses could help them cope with the press’s scrutiny. “You do kind of feel like you’re shielded,”he tells The Journal. James Harden, a Thunder guard famous for his King Tut-like beard, has a much simpler theory: “It’s their swag.” 

What are other examples of geek chic? 
Durant is known to appear at news conferences with a schoolboy backpack tightly strapped to his shoulders. On Thursday night, Durant, Wade, and James all spoke to the press wearing pocket handkerchiefs that matched their outfits. Amar’e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks was featured in a Foot Locker commercial wearing quintessential geek-chic attire: A cardigan, a thin tie, and oversized glasses.

Why is geek chic so popular in the NBA? 
It’s likely an outgrowth of, and a response to, a 2005 dress code implemented by NBA Commissioner David Stern to improve the league’s “bad-boy” image. The code, says Matt Ufford at SB Nation, took direct “aim at hip hop culture: Jeans, T-shirts, Timberland boots, large jewelry, and do-rags were all banned.” Players were “challenged to think creatively about dismantling Stern’s black-male stereotyping,” says Wesley Morris atGrantland, and drew on larger shifts in black culture led by artists like Pharrell Williams, Andre 3000, and Kanye West, who “ushered in the chic of the black nerd.”

Is the trend here to stay? 
Perhaps not. “Trends, they come and go, and people get on board with them or they don’t,” says Wade. “With the nerd glasses in the NBA, it’s just something fun to do right now. I’m sure next season it’ll be out the window.”

 The NBA’s geek-chic craze: What’s with the nerdy glasses? – The Week.

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