How the NBA Turned the Tunnel Into a Major Fashion Runway

Chad Brown loves fashion and basketball, so why not combine the two? That was his big pitch to the higher-ups at the National Basketball Association, where he worked, in 2016: to report on the increasing overlap between the two worlds. The idea, however, was met with C-suite crickets, so Brown pursued it on his own time with an Instagram account dedicated to the fire fits (read: stylish ensembles) of the sport’s hottest players.

“I was like, I’ll just do it because nobody else is, and I want to see it,” he tells T&C with a shrug. “And then it just kept growing and growing.”

Today Brown oversees @NBAFashionFits, an account with 183,000 followers and an influential force at the center of a lively new media beat. In addition to him, there’s @LeagueFits (843,000), @MoreThanStats (75,000), and @ProTrending (70,000), all duking it out to ID the Gucci, Hermès, and Dior dripping off basketball’s supernovas. That’s in addition to the players themselves, who increasingly post their outfits to their own Insta­gram accounts—or slide into Brown’s DMs imploring him to hype them up. It’s an indicator of the way athletes, once sidelined in the game of fashion, are now center court. “They were dressing up before, but there was no platform for it,” Brown says.

All of which revolves around the tunnel walk, the basketball world’s answer to the red carpet. Formerly a mundane, unnoticed shuffle from the arena entrance to the locker room, that short distance is now during finals a splashy catwalk in its own right, with fresh-from-the-runway designer goodies, rich and powerful men, screaming fans, and the flash of paparazzi bulbs.

To a generation of young, style-savvy hypebeasts, NBA stars like Steph Curry (Golden State Warriors), James Harden (Philadelphia 76ers), Serge Ibaka (Milwaukee Bucks), Kyle Kuzma (Washington Wizards), and Jordan Clarkson (Utah Jazz) are the fashion lodestars eclipsing musicians and actors of yore.

They’re rich, famous, with towering frames that easily match any Greek statue; in other words, a perfect combination to be a modern day mannequin. For proof, think of the time in 2018 when superstar LeBron James, then a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, persuaded his entire team to wear Thom Browne’s signature shrunken gray suits en masse. It set the Internet aflame, generating plenty of buzz and articles from GQ and the Gray Lady herself.

“We forget that fashion has always been a part of NBA culture,” says stylist Courtney Mays, who works with Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul among others. Just look back to Magic Johnson in a fur jacket in 1988 or Dennis Rodman’s entire headline-making career as proof. “But because of social media it has grown exponentially.”

The fashion industry is all too aware of the celebrity of these athletes and the influence of their social platforms. In 2020, the late Virgil Abloh and Louis Vuitton partnered with the NBA for a recurring capsule collection that dropped its third iteration in early June, this time featuring an official travel trunk for the league's Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Matt Powell, a VP at the market research firm NPD Group focusing on the sports industry, notes that what’s different now is the players are more aware of the power of branding themselves. “I think that these players recognized that social media was an opportunity to demonstrate their own style and taste,” he says.

One can’t help but see this development as part of the broader cultural shift around masculinity and self-representation. “We put athletes in this box, in this very masculine world,” Mays adds. “But why can’t they love fashion? The way you dress affects the way you feel.” While much of the time they are in uniforms, these short tunnel struts allow us to see a glimpse of their personalities, from Paul’s dapper tailoring to Clarkson’s avant-garde flair (skirts!) to Miami Heart P.J. Tucker, whose shoe addiction means he often carries an additional pair with him.

Now, Brown says, he has noticed that beyond skinny Amiri jeans and Chelsea boots giving way to baggier silhouettes, players are also deftly using tunnel photo-ops to highlight causes close to their hearts, like when Mays and Paul decided to wear gear from the country’s historically Black colleges and universities.

“We said, ‘Let’s really use those few seconds,’” says Mays. “We want to use style as a platform.” So, sure, a game-winning shot from the free throw line may thrill some diehard fans, but to many, the hottest action is no longer happening on the court at all.

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