NBA Accessories Week: Dwyane Wade made tights cool

Sometimes what a player wears on the court has a bigger impact than what they do on it does. For Dwyane Wade, he popularized the trend of wearing tights.

As a kid, I watched the NBA for two reasons. The first was that it featured the best players in the world playing the game I loved — nothing else could match the pure entertainment it brought me. I couldn’t wait to run out to the park or my own hoop and try to imitate each and every highlight play.

Secondly, I needed to know what to wear when I played.

These were the professionals, the best of the best. So naturally, every item they wore I fully believed was donned to make them perform better.

Bonus if the item could be purchased with the NBA logo on it.

Playing well wasn’t as satisfying if it wasn’t done while looking good. In the mid-2000s, baggy clothes were all the rage. The looser the garment and the further it hung off your body, the more confidence you played with.

It wasn’t just the uniforms either; before player entrances became an award show red carpet, the players’ suits were very spacious also.

Then Dwyane Wade changed everything. He wore tights.

Compression underwear was very common in basketball. Yet, the idea of wearing full-length ones was completely foreign.

Even pop culture stigmatized the garment as unmanly. In Step Up, Channing Tatum’s character spends the majority of the movie flatly rejecting the notion of having to wear them to perform in ballet dance.

So to see them pop up on an NBA court was nothing short of shocking.

The response to them wasn’t very favorable. Marcus Camby mocked his fellow players who choose to wear “pantyhose.” Andrew Bogut said, “I don’t like how it looks,” and the league itself was initially against them.

In the beginning, players were forced to provide the NBA with a written request from a team doctor that cited the player’s “medical need” to wear tights. There were rumors that they would be banned entirely by the league for the 2006-07 season.

That’s when the rest of the world took notice. Much like Nike using the disapproval of the higher-ups to sell shoes (see: “Banned” Air Jordan I), once the threat of them being outlawed spread, they were the must-have accessory of players everywhere.

I remember getting the $35 “pro basic” version that Nike sold in black. Naturally I wanted to see what the fuss was about but more importantly, the best players (Wade, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James) wore them.

As every high school basketball player knows, the first tryout is basically a regimented track meet on the hardwood. Sprints beget sprints, which begets more sprints.

Well for that first practice the tights were on. The squeeze of the compression material was new to the part of my legs below the thigh. It took some getting used to, but the tingle brought new life to my game.

The sprints came and went. Two hours later practice was finished and my teammates and I rested on the sidelines as we prepared to exit.

When I sat down I suddenly realized that my legs still felt fresh. I wanted to be sure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me so I got back up and took a couple of shots and my initial prognosis was correct: My legs felt great.

I was sold. Wade rallying the Miami Heat to an NBA title that season was the icing on the cake.

The revolution had begun. Instead of making players take them off, the league decided to have the leggings color coordinate with jerseys to give a more uniformed look.

Unlike some of the previous accessory fads that had made waves, the tights actually served a purpose. The team physician for the Dallas Mavericks at the time, T.O Souryal said, “The tights provide compression. Compressed muscles fire efficiently, especially if injured. Players with muscle strains benefit from the improved circulation and support.”

Fast forward to today and more players than not wear some sort of tights — the 3/4 length being the most popular choice.

There were players who wore them before him, but when Dwyane Wade became “Flash,” even though he may not have donned a cape, he did wear tights.