Players Should Be Sexy, Not Frumpy

Recently, while sitting through my umpteenth 1997 National Basketball Association playoff game, a thought hit me:

Basketball owes me.

As a girl, I served iced tea to neighborhood hoopsters on our backyard court. As a teenager, I tearfully scraped souvenir tape from the gym floor where my high school team lost the state finals. Recently, I’ve endured my adolescent sons scrimping to buy basketball shoes so fancy they can’t play in them because, “Like, they might get dirty.”

So I have a right to ask the game to do something for me: Bring back booty shorts.

“Booty shorts” is the snide name kids use to describe the fitted, butt-grazing shorts once sported by ballplayers. Anyone following the playoffs - anyone who’s watched a recent basketball game from peewee level to pro - hasn’t seen them. Early in the ‘90s, the sleek shorts that were good enough for Kareem, Magic and Bird fell into disfavor. Somehow, the revealing shorts that spark women’s preference for basketball uniforms over football’s refrigerator-carton ensembles vanished. Their replacement: lengthy and voluminous bloomers that I’ll hereafter refer to as “zooty shorts,” after the ridiculous, balloonlike zoot suits worn in the 1940s. Bloomers that no self-respecting man watcher will tolerate a moment longer.

Enough of glistening, muscular super athletes playing a bruising game in what looks like their mothers’ discarded culottes. Enough of NBA players, most of whose ancestors clearly aren’t Scottish, prancing around in neon-colored kilts. These days, there are enough guys with shaved heads and skirts on any given basketball court to suggest a Hare Krishna convention.

Sure, baggy equals stylish. But Hakeem Olajuwon power-dunking in a frock is like “Baywatch” babe Yasmine Bleeth giving CPR in a caftan. Bloomers are not sexy. Sports - especially basketball - are supposed to be sexy.

That’s why 95 percent of the ads for the new Women’s National Basketball Association focus on gorgeous model-player Lisa Leslie. It’s why basketball’s most popular players and pitchmen - Allen Iverson, Grant Hill, Michael Jordan - are hunks. It’s why Tyra Banks, who adores basketball and could have any man on planet Earth, allegedly dates sports’ hottest ticket: Tiger Woods.

Sports’ sexiness and the bloomers crisis became jointly clear to me a few years ago, when I started watching the man who is now my husband play ball in citywide tourneys. Although I was never into jocks, something about watching this thoughtful guy getting physical - doing spin moves, sinking jumpers - had a definite warming effect. But season after season, I was dismayed to notice my honey’s shorts getting longer and fuller.

Suddenly, every man playing the game I loved - except for Utah Jazz guard John Stockton and most of the otherwise awful Vancouver Grizzlies - was wearing pedal pushers.

Two of the culprits responsible for this travesty are locals. Bullets stars Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, formally of the University of Michigan’s fabled Fab Five, helped spark the trend as freshmen during the 1991-92 season. Today, the Bullets may wear the zootiest shorts in the league.

They’re paying dearly. In their recent first-round playoff games, the tent-wearing Bullets looked like homeless men compared with the sleeker-outfitted Bulls. Worse, they lost three close games partly because of time wasted pulling up and slapping away extra yards of shorts fabric. No sartorially distracted team can beat the Bulls.

So what if players say zooty shorts offer “more freedom”? Did Wilt let a little tightness cramp his style? Zooty-mania is so out of control I’m doing what a concerned citizen must: starting a movement. As founder of the Bring Back Booty Shorts campaign, I’ll ask like-minded humans - OK, women to hound NBA Commissioner David Stern into establishing a league rule demanding the suspension of players whose shorts dip within three inches of their knees.

Perhaps, NBA legend and NBC analyst Julius “Dr. J” Erving, once heaven in booty shorts, could help out by reminding the young guns of what’s truly hot. Nah, the Doctor’s credibility probably slipped when he darkened his suave salt-and-paper ‘do and shaved his mustache. Even kids know that real brothers over 40 wear facial hair.

Only one man can fix this. Dapper ex-booty shorts wearer Michael Jordan still favors semi-fitted shorts offering actual glimpses of thigh. One playoff appearance in true booty shorts by His Airness and stampedes of young fans will flock to malls to buy them. Overnight, shorts will again be short, and my appreciation of the game complete.

The one downside: Nike-produced booty shorts will cost $239 - and each of my sons will own three pairs that he can’t wear.

xxxx