The NBA announced that after just 1 season of introducing what they call the ninja styled headbands, the players are now banned from wearing these, as apparently they appeared unprofessional. While this quick change of heart is a bit strange for the league in my opinion, I wanna mention some other accessories that players wore, or tried to wear, but were stopped by the association.
What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
First up it’s the black mask. Superstars like Kobe, Kyrie and Lebron all had big games while wearing it. But James was the last one to show off his super cool carbon fiber protective mask.
After a game against the Knicks in 2014 he was told by the NBA that he’s not allowed to wear it anymore, so he had to go with the next best thing, a clear carbon fiber version. And we haven’t seen the notorious dark knight mask ever since.
The King also once wore these interesting glasses, tho I don’t know if they are allowed or not since he threw them out himself after getting frustrated on a play.
What I do know however is that Rajon Rondo wore these sunglasses during a pre game warm up, but was told that he can’t even start the game like that. He’d been dealing with some migraines and the bright lights on the court caused some of it, so that was Rondo’s explanation but obviously not convincing enough.
One other random accessory rule involving Rajon is the banning of the upside down headband.
He kinda became notorious for having the NBA logo upside down for whatever reason, and occasionally other players would do it as well, so when the league noticed this, they immediately put an end to it.
Here’s an interesting one. You may remember that during the 09 season Dwyane Wade tried to be Nelly for a few games when he wore all kinds of colors and styles and basically branded his own band aids. He got a small cut so he tried to make a simple protection utility into a fashion accessory on court. But after a while he was informed that he cannot have these anymore.
Believe it or not, there was a time when the NBA didn’t allow the iconic shooting sleeves on court. Allen Iverson of course was the guy who bent the rules a little bit by saying that the compression gear helps with circulation in his surgically repaired elbow.
Over time, the league eased up on this embargo, and anyone could play with it, to a point where now the shooting sleeve is a part of the uniform for many players.
And while on that topic, you may remember J.R. Smith and Kelly Oubre getting in a bit of trouble for wearing a Supreme version of the sleeve. Both of them had to take it off as soon as a league representative noticed it. Reason behind it was the rule that a player is not allowed to display brands other than the official ones anywhere except on shoes.
So you can have Supreme shoes but not a sleeve or a headband.
And guess what, you can’t even have a tattoo of a brand logo on your own body. So of course J.R. being loyal to Supreme got a gigantic leg tattoo which he needed to cover during games, and he definitely wasn’t too happy about that as he expressed his opinions on Instagram.
Lonzo Ball also had to cover his Big Baller Brand tattoo, and get this, Iman Shumpert once had a haircut with the Adidas logo on the back of his head, which he then had to modify and turn into this nice triangle. Honestly tho, if he’s crazy enough to walk around with an adidas logo etched on his head, I’m sure he didn’t mind the triangle too much either.
Although this isn’t an official game so everything’s ok and no bans happened during the All Star here’s Michael Jordan rocking the iconic set of chains during the dunk contest and of course winning it.
And finishing up with Shaq’s outrageous shoes which he promoted during All Star games. Of course you couldn’t play in these as they were only props that served as marketing for his own brand of shoes, so there were no issues whatsoever.
So the ninja style headbands had a short run in the NBA and they join some other accessories that we’ll probably never see on the court again.
That’s it for now, if you liked this video, subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you don’t miss my future in depth analysis. Although this definitely wasn’t one. Talk to you in the next one. Peace out.
0 Comments