We thought this was dead, but it seems our unofficial claim to fame has returned…in a way.
With Tracy McGrady and the Rockets in NYC to face the Knicks tonight, we thought it was the right time to point out the situation to your left.
We initially thought those were knee braces, but upon closer inspection of +/-4,000 pictures of Tracy McGrady’s season thus far, we’ve determined that he is indeed wearing some kind of tights hybrid.
What are they? They’re certainly not full tights, which were outlawed by David Stern this summer. Nor are they a simple non-brace knee sleeve, if such a thing even exists.
Whatever the case, they actually look quite a bit more disturbing than the full tights to us. We welcome your thoughts, speculation, or references to irrelevant late-1980s Detroit Pistons accomplishments.
While most of the world spent yesterday salivating for a lackluster Final Four, we spent the day rewatching the second half of the best NBA game of the entire year.
It was either six or seven times, and each viewing was just as incredible as the last.
LeBron vs. Wade was officially born yesterday, and there’s plenty of praise going around this morning. The full assortment of links are at the end of this post – we’ll go with a little Pat Riley action to give you taste of what you may have missed.
The two young stars put on a show of dazzling dunks, drives and playoff-caliber hustle that awed fans, their teammates and a coach who witnessed the legendary battles between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
“People got a view of absolute greatness,” Heat coach Pat Riley said. “It’s absolutely beyond description. I haven’t seen players do that in a long, long time.”
It was that good – if you missed it, then you didn’t see it, plus you were obviously doing something else. Thank god Riles said it was beyond description – that pretty much gives us clearance to stop trying to describe it.
One thing we noticed on viewing number three was that Dwyane Wade is somewhat of a fraud. He’s not wearing tights at all – he’s wearing some kind of long stockings. We don’t know if that’s the right word, but the revelation was both shocking and shocking.
Terry Pluto tries to help Clevelanders understand what this is that we’re witness to, because we’ve never had anything close to this before.
Bud Shaw tries and fails to describe the whole thing. Should’ve listened to Riles, Bud.
Ira Winderman cedes performance victory to LeBron.
Israel says the duel between these lads was bigger than the game itself, and nobody will remember that the Cavs won.
Stephon Marbury and Larry Brown are in disagreement over whether Starbury is really hurt or not. Oops, that one was just for fun.
Yeah, we just shut it all down a few minutes ago, but that was before we headed over to our daily stop at the Daily Quickie.
Young Dan Shanoff, our friend, mentor, and the godfather of all six of our kids, has chimed in on the tights issue, noting that the guys wearing them are stars, ie Dwyane, Kobe, LeBron, Stackhouse, et al, and the NBA should trust them to know what looks okay and what doesn’t.
Fair point and we’re glad we read it. What followed it, however, were some shocking revelations.
I tried the “tights look” myself back in the winter when Kobe first sparked the craze. I did look stupid. They did feel uncomfortable.
Dude, you didn’t “try the tights look”, you wore tights. There is no try, as a wise Star Was muppet once said. There is do or do not and that’s all.
That muppet was voiced by Frank Oz. His name was Yoda, and he became very, very famous. More famous than Dan Shanoff or The Cavalier. Did he wear tights?
The Cavalier don’t wear tights. People come to us and say all the time, “hey, try these tights, man.” The Cavalier looks at them and he say, “no man, The Cavalier don’t wear tights.” The Cavalier is too cool to wear tights. The Cavalier just does what The Cavalier does. People can say whatever they want about The Cavalier – The Cavalier is the best point guard in the NBA.
(The only decent photo the Cavalier could find of Dan was the one The Cavalier already Photoshopped back in like another month that isn’t this one.)
UPDATE: Dan just sent us the top-secret location of his original tights adventure.
What can we say that we haven’t already said? It’s over as of next season.
How do we feel? Eh. Not like anything, really. LeBron stopped wearing these months ago, although we should add we had a dream last night about him playing in bright red ones.
In fact, we already said our farewell to tights last month. We bowed out early – the joke was over. Allow us to quote from that very post in case you’ve forgotten.
That’s it – we’ve said all we can…and we’re tired of it. ESPN and everyone else can run with the tights now. Let it always be known – the tights era was started right here, and we’ve said all we can to let you know they look freaking ridiculous. We will always think they look ridiculous – this isn’t Hammer Pants or flannel shirts or heroin any of the other trains we hopped on in middle school.
Truth be told, we didn’t wear Hammer Pants until high school – we were behind on that one. There – we’re a liar. Happy now?
Here’s everything we’ve ever written about tights – from Kobe’s November bout with cold air through this morning. This is not a time to cry or mourn…no, this is a day to look back fondly on these leggings that gave us all such joy and a mention in the Wall Street Journal.
Someone named Marcus Slaughter has declared for the draft. (Insert Simmons-esque Blazers joke here.)
Some nerd is the Rockets’ new GM.
Something to do with Return of the Jedi, Rashard Lewis, FreeDarko, and fantasy sports.
Need4Sheed thinks back to the days of the Bad Boys. We’ve thought about them recently, too. In 15-20 years, which Isiah Thomas will you remember more?
If you sent in a sidebar ad, it’ll be up this weekend. Don’t forget -we’re posting tomorrow. Not only is there an afternoon Cavs-Heat game, but it’s the first day of April…and a whole new era.
Sorry we’ve left you hanging today and yesterday – it’s been a crazy week. But the good kind of crazy, so that’s good. Alas, we’re back, and to make up for our low post count in the last 48 hours, we’re gonna hit you with NBA action Saturday. So prepare to waste your weekend sitting at the computer.
Anyway, we’ve just been alerted that this is going on. How were we alerted? By Jones on the NBA, of course, because he loves alerting people of things, even after we’ve added him to our feed-reader and told him it’s not necessary.
I just read about the impending ban on tights. I’m waiting a classic yay sports post in response.
Who gave you permission to put us under that kind of pressure? This is just like the other day with whatever it was – we can’t remember or we blocked it out.
We’ll have our response to the issue above tomorrow. Don’t forget Saturday, which just happens to be April 1st.
Not that that’s a day of any significance or anything. Just another day.
Hey – do a Google Image Search for “NBA tights”. Who the big tights king? Who? That’s right.
The Lakers whupped up on the Orlando Magicals last night, and by doing so, have creeped over .500 for what looks like at least today.
Instrumental in the game was Kwame Brown, who’s getting pushed along to excel contribute anything by everyone from Phil Jackson to rookie Ronny Turiaf.
“I am trying to push him during practice and before the games,” [Turiaf] said. “We have our whole new routine going now. Kwame has a little confidence coming back up, so I think it is going to be scary to guard him because when he has confidence, he is pretty unstoppable.”
We wouldn’t call 11 points “unstoppable”, but we will call it weird that a rookie 2nd round draft pick is trying to instill confindence in a number one overall draft pick.
Yeah, Kwame Brown is a sex machine, we know. But the truth of the matter is he also has problems doing things like scoring and rebounding.
We’re on his side, though. Seriously. We’ll say it right now, too – if Kwame can continue to average 5 points per game for this season and the next two, he just may be able to get that 5-year, $60M deal from the Knicks he’s been wanting so badly.
The Lakers and Kings renewed their rivalry last night, although now it’s a battle of mid-level teams and there’s really no battle of wills or much at stake.
Actually, both teams are in the hunt for that final playoff spot in the West, althought that just doesn’t carry the weight that battling for the whole West once did. Phil Jackson felt the game was a good sign for his inconsistant team.
“We’ve had a couple momentum shifts throughout the course of the year, and this is what we’ve been talking about as a group — we want to build the momentum, because now is the time to do it,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. “We’ve shown signs of this — the Houston game at the end of the road trip.”
Looks like the Lakers could be somewhat on track, although as Phil notes, they’ve felt they’ve been “there” before.
Other than that, not much was notable about the game. Nothing else to say really. Everyone have a good night? Have any big plans for the weekend?
Really, we wish we could find something else to say about the Lakers/Kings game. How’s everyones’ families? You guys have kids or anything? Seriously, it’s always about us – let’s talk about you.
Only like 3 and a half hours to the deadline and not nearly enough player movement has gone on for our liking.
JR Smith thinks he’s on his way out of New Orleans.
KG isn’t going anywhere, okay?
Neither is AI, although maybe it’s time for him to just a wear a full-on wetsuit underneath, huh?
Speaking of tights, we’re now a the top referring site over at that male-tights blog we linked to the other day. Here’s the latest:
Yesterday I wore barely black Debenhams medium support sheers all day. In the evening I wore them with shorts while I helped my wife prepare lesson plans and other things because she has got OFSTED in her school. She said nothing about my legwear, even though I was wearing neither nude sheers nor more masculine looking opaques.
Also, we can’t find where because it’s in a foriegn language, but the site that has sent more traffic to YAYsports! this month than any other? This tights message board.
JE Skeets traded himself to The Basketball Jones.
Pat Riley and the Heat are looking for a frontline starter.
The Bay Area would like to see Chris Mullin make some moves for the Warriors.
Everyone is talking about this Tammy Nyp chick, therefore…we’ll trade our integrity for some traffic, too.
When you have a blog, a helpful this to do is to go to Technorati to see who has linked to your work. It’s like the blog directory or something and tracks links, which is why you go there to check who’s linked to you.
For example, the other day we noticed that this blog named Geraden linked to one of our old tights stories. Here’s an excerpt from his post titled, “Male legwear in sports”.
Could this be a powerful lever to bring about acceptance of legwear as unisex fashion? Yes, possibly, if it goes the right way.
Maybe they will start buying Activskin A869s or A879s. And maybe this will be picked up by young men in general. That is the preferred scenario. It seems to me that we do not want this look to catch on too quickly, because if it does, the second scenario is more likely. On the other hand, if there is a slower pace, where the wearing of legwear is taken up mainly by male sports players [SNIP]
That’s quite enough of that.
The whole damn blog’s about Geraden’s quest to get tights mainstream, and yep, we’ve been cited as helping enable that movement.
So, uh, we’re feeling really proud this morning. Y’know, cause now we’ve finally accomplished something.
(We just want to apologize for everything we’ve written this morning, by the way. Taking that day off really threw us for a loop it seems. But what the hell anyway – did anyone else notice we’re getting freaking FIRED tomorrow?)
With the Cavaliers on a 6-game win streak following their beating-up of the Bobcats last night, the fact just may be that LeBron’s tights are here to stay. Now that everyone in the mainstream is talking about them, including the PTI guys yesterday (Kornheiser is indifferent, Wilbon says “no”), it’s time to retire our long coverage of the issue.
First though, a final word on them, in rebuttle to this comment posted yesterday.
There is not anything wrong and who cares anyway. They have some support for your legs and also provides thermal layering to prevent cramping in your calves. I happen to wear them while exercising, rollerblading or just with shorts. There are Nike, Reebok, Activskin, Zyflex, E.G. Smith, Harmonie, and other brands that are available. Try a search. you will see it is acatually the in thing. Also, Surfers , snowboarders, etc wear em too.
First of all, Rik0915ca (if that is indeed your real name), there is something wrong with it, and since you’ve covered pretty much all of the pro-tights angles here, let’s break it down.
See us break it down after the jump.
[click to continue…]
