The Billiken's Bluff

The NBA has recently begun enforcing a 1-inch shorts rule, i.e., no player's shorts can be longer than 1-inch above the knee.


A.I. would be fined for this.

Six players, including the New York Knicks' Stephon Marbury and Nate Robinson, have been fined $10,000 apiece for wearing shorts that exceed the allowable length. I was watching a NYK game on Sunday (for only about 2 minutes, before it became unwatchable) and I noticed that Starbury's shorts did look noticeably more John Stockton-esque.



The commissioner’s office is standing behind the strict enforcement of this rule.

"That's why I've got some players rolling up their waistbands, to make themselves legal," said Detroit Pistons president Joe Dumars. "We were just warned about it. But I don't think it looks very good when guys are playing with their waistbands turned inside-out."



Rolling up the wasteband, a trick that anyone who went to a Catholic school is very familiar with. In the elementary and high schools I went to, there was a strict dress code for girls; they couldn't wear skirts higher than one-inch of above the knee (or something like that, it might have even been more like 3 inches below the knee, something prude and nun-like). The girls would have their skirts hemmed to the legal length, but would then roll up their wastebands to wuthering heights while walking down the halls.

So catholic school girls would roll up their skirts and get in trouble. Now NBAers are rolling up their shorts to stay out of trouble… I guess that makes perfect sense. All is right in the world (outside of the Mid East Region).

The Knicks’ City Dancers have already taken the cue about the short short thing.



Look at that compliance!!!