[DougG_ATL]

Last week's hip-hop/NBA thread became quite controversial...then, i saw THIS story from today's L.A. Times:

NBA Lists Fashion Do's and Don'ts
http://www.latimes.com/sports/basket...home-headlines

Some key points:

The NBA says it will require players to wear "business casual attire" when they are on league or team business and not in uniform — apparently the first attempt by a major U.S. pro league to regulate how its millionaire athletes dress when not competing.

Deemed "quite liberal and easygoing" by NBA Commissioner David Stern, the code bans sunglasses worn indoors, sleeveless shirts, shorts, T-shirts, chains and do-rags, while requiring players on the bench and not in uniform to wear sport coats.

"We obviously have an image problem, and the commissioner is trying to make it better by doing this, but who knows if it's going to work," Clipper center Chris Kaman said Tuesday. "You have guys wearing do-rags and chains and stuff like that, which was probably a little too much."

"The players have been dressing in prison garb for the last five or six years," Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. "All the stuff that goes on, it's like gangsta, thuggery stuff. It's time. It's a good time to do that. But one must remember where one came from. I was wearing bib overalls when I was a player."

And most interesting:

The NBA, which more than any other U.S. sports league has embraced hip-hop culture in trying to market itself to young fans as edgy and hip, wants to burnish its image. Business-savvy superstars in expensive suits, led by Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Michael Jordan, were the faces of the league in the 1980s and 1990s.

But shifts in American culture have played into concerns about a growing disconnect between the NBA and a portion of its audience. In recent years, players have begun to sport diamonds, gold, tattoos and street-inspired fashion such as vintage jerseys, while arenas have played beat-heavy rap music at games.

Robert Hutcherson, the head of a grass-roots fan group, told the Los Angeles Times last year that in the minds of some middle-aged ticket buyers, the music had helped perpetuate the notion of a "thug league."