Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
WHO WEARS SHORT SHORTS?
THE HEAT — AND A GROWING NUMBER IN THE NBA
It has been the burning question throughout this Miami Heat season, one that has been both distracting and compelling: Can those shorts possibly get any smaller or any tighter?
Understand, this gripping matter is not necessarily sown solely from this season.
It was, in fact, after Tyler Herro was drafted out of Kentucky in 2019 that he asked Heat equipment manager Rob Pimental if he had anything shorter than the Heat’s shortest shorts.
A seamstress was called in to assist. “I’ve been wearing short shorts since middle school, actually,” Herro said of a fashion wave that has cut to the very fabric of today’s NBA. “I like ‘em short, I feel more comfortable on the floor with ‘em.”
In recent years, players have taken to rolling the waistbands on standard-issue NBA shorts to create the desired thigh reveal, a considerable change from the long, baggy look that former Heat player and assistant coach Juwan Howard helped cultivate with Michigan’s Fab Five freshmen back in the early ’90s.
But now even inseams are being produced to align with the tightened demand.
Take, for example, Heat 2019 secondround pick KZ Okpala, who opts for Size 38 if available, with his 6-foot-8 build.
“I actually asked if I could get shorter shorts, just ‘cause that’s my style,” he said. “I played that way in college. So that’s just something that I’m comfortable with and that’s just my style.
“I like the look. And for me it’s more comfortable.”
Even old school with the Heat has moved new school, with Meyers Leonard asking for shorter than standard in order to highlight his quads.
Okpala doesn’t quite go that far.
“For me,” he said, “it’s more like it makes me feel ready to go.”
As long as they don’t go to great lengths. “I mean they came like that and I liked that,” Okpala said of the current cut of the smaller waist sizes. “But if they would have come longer, I would have told him I need smaller.”
The trend has been traced to LeBron James’ move from the Heat back to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2015, aligning to the more tapered look of menswear in general.
Since then, although not to the degree of some college players, the NBA has tapered its approach, with the Heat part of the movement.
“I like the functionality,” Okpala said, with the Heat in the midst of a six-day
All-Star break, with their schedule to resume Thursday night against the Orlando Magic at AmericanAirlines Arena.
Yet for all that is visible on game nights, the practice court is an even more stark story. Former Heat forward Derrick Jones Jr. went as far as taking matters into his own hands, cutting his workout shorts down to sizes otherwise not produced. So he put in a request to assistant equipment manager Ryan Powell for shears.
“Me and my guy Ryan, we came up with where we’re going to cut them at,” Jones said. “That’s how I’m comfortable. I never was the type of person that liked baggy stuff.
I never was into the style of baggy clothes.
“My stuff was always fitted. I got tats on my legs, so I like to show them off.”
Issued a Size L by the Heat, he opted for alterations.
“We just get ‘em shortened,” said Jones, who left during the offseason in free agency to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The irony is that players find the tighter shorts liberating.
“I think having too baggy shorts is restricting,” Herro said, “because they get caught between your legs; they’re in the way. So I think the short shorts helped me.”
But, Herro said, to each his own.
“I like just having comfortable shorts that I like wearing,” he said. “So I think about whatever you’re comfortable with, wear it.”