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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThe moment Russell Westbrook steps off the bus in Denver for the Oklahoma City Thunder's game against the Nuggets, you get the feeling that something insane is going to happen tonight. He's wearing red leather motorcycle pants, a Superdry bomber jacket, black Doc Martens with the laces undone, and his trademark superfluous eyeglasses. A meager runway gallery awaits him\u2014just a few security guards, OKC's team photographer, and me\u2014but he still disembarks with purpose. Even in a league that's warped from \"pinstriped spinnaker on draft night\" to \"pure line cut slim enough to make Beckham look like a slob,\" Russ is a radical: His style is a punk provocation, a sartorial troll, and most crucially a full-on style, not just a series of outr\u00E9 outfits that no other player has the guts to wear. He's swinging a leather Dopp kit with his right arm in a repetitive motion that could only be described as swag\u2014young, black, and Oi!\u2014and generally looking like he's striding out of Malcolm McLaren's London SEX shop in 1976. Every element of hiscostume is an extension of the identity he projects: part worldly NBA superstar, part suedehead hooligan.\n\nA few hours later, in what NBA bloggers now refer to as \"the queso incident,\" Westbrook lives up to his look. It all starts during a time-out when Rocky the Mountain Lion, the Nuggets' plushy yellow mascot, heaves up a perfect-looking half-court shot. If he makes it, everybody in the Pepsi Center wins a free side of queso from Qdoba. But as the ball slo-mos toward the rim, Westbrook races over, leaps up, and pulls a supervillain move, intercepting it and inspiring the most scornful cascade of boos I've ever heard.\n\nMore NBA Style:\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\nWestbrook's style-provocateur act has already become renowned in the NBA, because he stars on one of the league's two best teams, appears regularly on nationally televised games\u2014where coverage of that short catwalk from the bus to the locker room is de rigueur\u2014and is expected to return to the NBA's fashion week, the Finals, in June. But he is only one point of light in the league's new style-savvy firmament, just one Instagram account in a sea of vanity-mirrored baller selfies. After all, the Thunder are merely watching the Heat's (bespoke-tailored) throne. While Kobe Bryant can stand outside the Lakers locker room and proclaim to me, \"I'm the Valentino of the NBA,\" as he explains that he's leaving \"the preppy-hipster look\" to the younger generation, Miami's swaggy Big Three\u2014LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh\u2014cannot relax. Not in a league where Amar'e Stoudemire can be found posting up in the front row of the Lanvin show at Paris fashion week, where Rajon Rondo's retinue is trying to persuade Givenchy to pour a custom mold exclusively for his size 13 feet, where Steve Nash can pull the faux-disaffected Clooney, brushing off my questions about his style with an \"I don't take it that seriously\" while going Gatsby (that's Kobe's nickname for him) in a suit from a Canadian made-to-order Internet clothier that he has a financial stake in.\n\nA few days later, Westbrook's publicist tells me that within certain rarefied fashion circles, RW is known as \"the Kate Moss of the NBA.\" Evidently somebody at Vogue wrote this to her in an e-mail. When I ask Russ how he feels about being compared to a female British supermodel famous for making heroin chic and saying things like \"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,\" he assures me he's cool with it. \"It's a little different,\" he says. \"But I think it got said because some people are not afraid to do certain things or wear certain stuff. You have to have a certain swagger about you.\" Even Westbrook has his limits, of course\u2014Kanye's infamous leather kilt, for instance. Though in his next breath Russ allows that he'd \"be open to it if it were a slimmer fit.\"\n\nThe NBA has had fashion moments before\u2014Clyde Frazier wearing his wide-brimmed Borsalino on the cover of Esquire, the introduction of the Air Jordan in the mid-'80s, Allen Iverson bringing cornrows, baggy jeans, and garish jewelry from the hood to the hardwood in the late '90s\u2014but the sine waves of high fashion and locker-room style have never synced up quite like they do right now. More than in any other sport, basketball showcases the individual; we can see each player's tics and idiosyncrasies when he's on the court, and that's how we begin to decide who we think he is. And at least as far back as Frazier, no sport has been more enmeshed in the allure of black culture and style. But recently, whether it's sparked by the explosion of social media or the imposition of David Stern's corporate-friendly dress code, or whether it's just the logical outcome of the ongoing gene splice of NBA superstars to multinational apparel companies, the players are more self-aware than ever, more cognizant that personal style is a prerequisite for personal brand. Whether they actually love fashion or not, they understand the need to be perceived as style leaders, at least of some kind, in order to maximize their shoe-company contracts.\n\nConsider the OKC Thunder. When they're in uniform, Westbrook and his All-NBA teammate, forward Kevin Durant, are the league's youngest, most exciting Batman-and-Robin act; in street clothes\u2014the term feels nearly archaic\u2014they are two opposite fronts in the NBA's escalating style wars. If Westbrook is the NBA's Kate Moss, then Durant is trying to become its Kate Middleton\u2014aristocratic and punctilious. Whereas Westbrook invites regular hazing from Charles Barkley and three-quarters of Twitter for dressing like a badass Ziggy Stardust in glammy Neil Barrett silver-leather shirts and Givenchy hoodies, Durant keeps it on the Take Ivy tip, seldom venturing far from the prepped-up hipster look favored around the league of late, pairing his Air Jordans or AF1s with various combos of custom-tailored cardigan, collared shirt, and corduroys. He's running for president, not leading an insurgency.\n\nCompared to the NBA's established style kings, Durant is still on the climb, newly intrigued, still searching for his look. \"I always wanted to be fly,\" he tells me outside a Barneys in Santa Monica, where he can't find one piece of off-the-rack clothing to fit his super-elongated limbs. \"I always put stuff together,\" he says. \"But it was hard for me to find clothes, since I was so tall, my feet were so big, my arms were so long.\"\n\nFor many of these guys, that's the biggest barrier: Not one designer in the industry\u2014not one\u2014is thinking six feet nine, 235, with a plus wingspan when determining next season's look. Another is functionality: NBA players sweat for a living. They're most comfortable in workout clothes, because that's where they live. Until last season, Durant was that guy. Then he was approached after a game by Regi Puckett, an enterprising stylist in Chicago, who told him he could push his look beyond the schoolboy knapsack-with-the-safety-strap gimmick he made famous during the previous year's playoffs. Now Durant can screen-grab a picture of a peacoat or a pair of slacks that he sees in a magazine or a blog and send it to Puckett, who will get the piece constructed to Durantula proportions.\n\nWestbrook, on the other hand, is normal-human-sized (he's six feet three) and can buy straight off the rack. He's loved shopping since his mother brought him to downtown L.A.'s fashion alley as a little kid. Now, he says, \"if I get bored after working out, I'll find some shops and go check it out and see if they have some new stuff. See what's good. I go to Barneys; I go to Gucci, Louis, YSL. I go everywhere\u2014Rodeo Drive, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Joyrich. I'm all around.\"\n\nHe's found friends within the haute couture scene, tagging along with Vogue's Andr\u00E9 Leon Talley during New York's Fashion Week last fall. \"ALT's not really into sports,\" he says, \"but we were able to conversate about the history of fashion, and I was able to get his perspective on the shows and how the fabrics and the clothes fit on the different girls and guys.\" Westbrook is especially proud that, unlike his peers around the league, he's never hired a stylist. So proud, in fact, that he's hired a publicist to trumpet the fact that he's never hired a stylist. \"I know people at stores that will hold stuff for me. I know people that can get me clothes,\" he says. \"But it's not like I have somebody that comes to pick out my outfits.\"\n\nThe surest sign that Westbrook has crossed over as a style icon is the venom he inspires. When I ask Puckett who the most stylish man in the NBA is, he insinuates that it's Kevin and takes a playful jab at Russ in the process. \"I'll say he shares a locker room with the guy that has the most people talking about what he's wearing.\"\n\nDurant immediately defuses style-rivalry talk. \"When I look in the mirror and I feel good about myself, that's the only person I'm trying to impress.\" Later, when I talk to Westbrook, he doesn't rise to the bait, either, but it's clear where he rates in his own mind. I tell him Durant admitted to me that he tunes up his look when he's in a big city like Los Angeles. Does RW also try a little harder in his hometown?\n\n\"Nah,\" he says, dismissively. \"I dress up everywhere.\"\n\n\n\nTime-wave zero for the modern era of NBA style is 2005, when the league adopted its new dress code. Vague enough in its language\u2014dress slacks or dress jeans, dress shoes or dress boots; collared shirt on the way into the locker room; no chains, pendants, or medallions worn over clothes; no hats, etc.\u2014it was strictly enforced upon introduction. You may recall some controversy. There were cries of racism, complaints that the league was cracking down on hip-hop fashions in deference to squirrelly corporate sponsors. The architect of the code, NBA commissioner David Stern, has always dismissed that idea. \"Our guys were photographed coming into buildings looking like they were going to a day at the beach,\" he explained to me.\n\nWhat no one disputes, Stern included, is that a cottage industry bloomed in the code's wake. At this moment in 2013, the NBA's fashion axis stretches from Waraire Boswell, a six-foot-seven bespoke tailor with a showroom in downtown Los Angeles (his clients for suits and separates include Blake Griffin, Chris Bosh, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler), to Laure Heriard Dubreuil, a well-connected French owner of a 20,000-square-foot multi-luxury-brand boutique in Miami Beach called The Webster, to the woman who has elevated the league's sartorial game higher than anybody else, the Harlem-based stylist Rachel Johnson, a former Essenceassistant who went on to do video shoots for Jay-Z and N.E.R.D. before landing big-name NBA clients like LeBron James.\n\nThis network cajoles American and European designers into expanding the top end of their size runs\u2014Dubreuil has successfully lobbied Givenchy to offer menswear sizes up to 62\u2014and ensures that the players get dibs on items from seasonal lines. (Just before New York's spring Fashion Week, I accompanied Johnson on a mission to Calvin Klein's midtown showroom to pull olood blazers for Stoudemire; STAT's measurements are then sent to Milan, where the jackets are sewn to his size). Johnson claims the stylists have convinced the fashion houses that an NBA player can help \"masculinize\" their clothes. \"Anybody with any insight understands a &amp;amp;#x2018;real guy' looks to an athlete before he looks to a waify model,\" she says, \"or even an actor.\"\n\nStern freely admits he never saw this coming, and then goes on to imply that he kinda saw this coming. Right after the code was instituted, \"a lot of players would whisper to me, I don't know what the fuss is about. Let's go! There was a sense that this allowed players to express their sense of style. Our players, individually, took it as a catalyst to show themselves off. And suddenly the response from the public was so overwhelmingly positive that, you know, it's getting to be like the red carpet at the Grammys. Who's dressing you tonight? Armani. Now they are among the best-looking, best-shaped models in the world.\"\n\n\n\nWhen I first hook up with the Miami Heat, we're in the visiting locker room at the Oracle in Oakland, where they've just knocked off the Golden State Warriors. LeBron scored the 20,000th point of his career tonight, making him the youngest ever to reach this milestone, and the media scrum around his locker has hardened into a callus. Across the room from Bron, Chris Bosh is in one corner, already dressed in a light fern, unbelievably slim custom Waraire Boswell suit and a \"CB\" tie bar, with a hardcover of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken visible from his unzipped black Parabellum bag. Dwyane Wade is pulling on a pair of electric-blue Scotch &amp;amp; Soda trousers, which he hikes up to showcase his multicolored hosiery as he hollers, \"You need to raise your sock game,\" in Ray Allen's direction.\n\nThis kind of style smack is constant in the Miami locker room, says veteran swingman Shane Battier\u2014so constant that \"it's when they stop talking about you that you know you're in trouble.\" Battier, who limits his own aspirations to \"suburban-dad hot\" (tailored button-ups under V-neck sweaters with jeans), says that the pressure on Miami's Big Three to dress well every day can be too much for even the most tasteful global icon. \"LeBron falters occasionally,\" Battier declares. \"And when he does, we let him know about it.\"\n\nBosh, who also works with Rachel Johnson, tells me that while he and Bron \"like to be stylish and comfortable,\" he thinks Wade is more willing to suffer for fashion. Wade agrees. \"I take more risks, knowing there are going to be jokes,\" he says. \"Chris doesn't take many risks\u2014he dresses very nice, but he keeps it simple.\"\n\nPerhaps Wade's most famous risk to date is the pink-chocolate-yellow patent leather Louboutins he wore to the White House on January 28 for the Heat's traditional congrats-on-that-NBA-title photo op with President Obama. Wade admits he was nervous about wearing the sneakers on such an official state visit and had to be nudged by his stylist, Calyann Barnett (who, incidentally, is Rachel Johnson's former assistant).\n\n\"I'm always more nervous than her, because I'm the one who has to put this stuff on,\" he says. \"This is my second time going to the White House as a champion. This time I decided on the gray suit. I knew everybody was going to go with something dark, so I wanted to do something different. And I had the gray-white-and-black shoes out that went with the suit, and then there was [the pink pair]. So we sat and thought about it: &amp;amp;#x2018;Okay, I can go with the gray-white-and-black ones, but that's typical, and I don't do typical all the time, so let's do something a little different.' And it worked!\"\n\nAt the ceremony in the East Room\u2014and apologies in advance for the logrolling, especially since military-industrial-fashion-plex logrolling is the worst kind, but I have to do it, if only for the benefit of the archivists\u2014Obama said the following: \"We saw Dwyane Wade, the heart and soul of this team, continue to do whatever it takes to win, including leading the team in blocks, and at the postgame press conferences he dressed well enough to land himself in GQ magazine.\" The president then turned away from the podium and, in a scene reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's CGI'd bemusement with Forrest Gump's bare ass, called out, \"Show 'em your kicks here, Dwyane.\" Satisfied, Obama turned back to the crowd. \"If any of you can pull this off other than Dwyane Wade, let me know.\"\n\n\"Fashion is fun to me,\" Wade tells me later. \"I feel like the way that I dress says a lot about my personality. A lot of people will not get a chance to talk to me, but when they look at me, they can get an idea of who Dwyane Wade is.\"\n\nWhile the Heat are in D.C. hanging with the president, I pay a visit to Johnson's Harlem office, where she shows me her \"inspiration board.\" On the wall behind her desk is a black pinboard with a collage of looks from fashion magazines cut and pasted underneath each one of her famous clients. It all feels so imperial\u2014courtiers of the court! Can you imagine Magic or Larry ever having an inspiration board? But Johnson has a specific trajectory in mind for LeBron and Bosh for the second half of the season. She wants to continue putting distance between them and the preppy look that David Stern affectionately refers to as \"nerdwear.\" Wade and Barnett, meanwhile, have their own plan for the spring: draining the color from Wade's look and focusing on texture and silhouette, partly to showcase Wade's \"maturity\" and partly as a cross-promotion for the Chinese shoe company Wade promotes, Li-Ning, whose spring line is the Black Collection.\n\nWhen I reconnect with the Heat in Brooklyn two nights after their White House trip, it's the team's first-ever visit to the Barclays Center, two weeks before the All-Star break. Wade steps off the bus wearing a beaver-fur bomber hat\u2014his teammates are calling him \"the Black Russian\"\u2014and a dark green motorcycle jacket by the young British designer Adrien Sauvage. Wade is not quite in Westbrook territory\u2014he loves clothes but hates to shop. \"My stylist has done an unbelievable job of opening my mind,\" he says. \"Without her I would be behind the curve. She helps me be in the now and in the future.\"\n\nAfter the game, a blowout win for the Heat, the visitors locker room is predictably jam-packed. There's a GQ photographer in here, and plans for a show-offy shot are being hatched, but D-Wade has to shout across the locker room at LeBron to be heard over this din: \"HEY, WE GONNA DO THIS PICTURE?\" LeBron looks confused amid all the commotion. He shouts back, \"I DUNNO. YOU GONNA DO IT?\"\n\nThey decide to do something unusual: They walk out together, sharing the runway, LeBron wearing an entirely different outfit from the one he wore coming into the arena. It's dressier. This time it's an A.P.C. peacoat over a crisp white shirt and tie. He has a black watchman's cap tilted on his head. Wade is still rocking the Black Russian.\n\nThe two of them are flanked by security guards who are mean-mugging through the phalanx of lingerers in the Barclays loading dock. LeBron and Wade get caught in an eddy against a wall, where they smile and say hello to a pair of female fans. The photographer is told to stop shooting, because nobody wants this to look weird. But we're running out of catwalk. Finally, the girls leave.\n\nWade turns to LeBron and says, \"Let's give GQ this money shot.\"\n\nSteve Marsh is a writer based in Minneapolis."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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