Fashion Takes Center Court Younger Players Just ‘Wannabe Like Mike’

Leave it to basketball players to take something as simple as a sweatband and turn it into a fashion statement.

Hoops players from high school to the NBA have begun wearing sweatbands up around the elbow, some even as high as the biceps. It’s the latest bit of haute couture to go along with baggy shorts and untucked shirts and the varying degrees of length on athletic socks.

Surely, there is some logical reason behind the trend. It must make you shoot better or keep your hands drier than wearing them the traditional way, around the wrists.

Don’t be silly. Many players say they wear the bands that way because they saw - who else? - Michael Jordan do it.

“Jordan wore one up on his arm,” said Mississippi State’s Dontae Jones, who sports two black Nike bands just below each elbow. “I just took it a step farther and put two on.”

Alabama’s Roy Rogers claims he was the first player to wear two armbands. Rogers, a lanky shot blocker, wears terry cloth whites around his biceps.

“My freshman year, I used to wear two of them on my wrists to prevent the sweat from getting on my hands,” said Rogers, now a senior. “That’s because I sweat a lot.”

But how did they end up so high?

“I moved them up my arms for style,” Rogers explained. “I was seeing guys wear one on their biceps. I decided to be the first to wear two.”

The trend has permeated the college and high school ranks. It probably started in the NBA.

The bands are also showing up on women’s players, who find themselves in the spotlight with more televised games. Though she doesn’t wear the sweatbands, Connecticut’s Jennifer Rizzotti is a walking fashion statement. She wears puffy white knee pads and her extra-long socks are bunched up around her ankles.

It always seems to go back to Jordan. According to sports fashion lore, the world’s most famous basketball player also started the baggy shorts phenomenon. The look, popularized by Michigan’s Fab Five, replaced the short, tight style of the early days. Each year, the trunks seem to get bigger.

In a simpler time, players like Pete Maravich and Julius Erving protected their hands from slippery sweat by wearing wrist bands in the only sensible place - around the wrists. Wearing them higher may serve the same purpose, although it must be uncomfortable to wipe your brow when the bands are up by your armpits.

It’s hard to imagine the trend invading the men’s casual wear scene, like big shorts.

“On the face of it, it seems pretty ludicrous, huh?” mused Scott Omelianuk, a fashion writer for Gentleman’s Quarterly. “But then again, I guess an argument can be made that they’re somewhat functional.

“Really, it doesn’t have a practical purpose for, say, the office. And I don’t think you’ll see it down at the local bar where everyone is watching the game.”

Some players have higher reasons for pushing up the armbands. Kentucky’s Tony Delk and Walter McCarty got it from Rodrick Rhodes, a teammate on last year’s team. Rhodes, who played high school ball with Bobby Hurley in Jersey City, N.J., wore them as a get-well wish after Hurley had a serious car accident.

Delk, who is McCarty’s roommate, said he originally donned the armband as a tribute to Rodney Dent, whose college career was cut short by a knee injury in 1994.

“It’s not a fashion statement,” Delk said.

For most players, it is. It’s enough to make you wonder what’s next. Inside-out jerseys? Boxers worn over uniform trunks?