The New Post-NBA Career? Streetwear Designer

A few years ago, Kanye West and Virgil Abloh spotted then Lakers guard Nick Young at a fashion event. On the spot, Kanye told Young he was the best-dressed player in the NBA.

Then Virgil heaped his praise on Young: "Mr. Cool, Mr. Cool, Mr. Cool, Mr. Cool guy,” Abloh remarked.

"My confidence went through the roof," Young said, speaking over the phone while driving through the California desert. “When he said that, I was like, I got to do something.”

“Something” became Most Hated, Young’s go at a streetwear line. On the site right now are flannel shirts, puff-printed with custom artwork and signature logos, in addition to an original basketball-short silhouette, paisley-printed, complete with mesh liner to form a half-basketball, half–board short. Young knows that there's a difference between being a fashion designer and selling tees. “If you’re not gonna put effort in, and you got your friend or somebody making clothes for you and just put a racing stripe on the sleeve," he said, "I think that’ll get played out.”

And in a moment when NBA players are more precious about what they wear than ever before, they seem to agree with Young’s taste. The Most Hated roster includes League Fits all-stars like Jordan Clarkson, Iman Shumpert, and Kelly Oubre.

When Young started the brand, in 2017, the most popular post-playing job for NBA players might have been becoming a broadcaster, or maybe getting into coaching. In recent years, players like Andre Iguodala and Kevin Durant have begun dipping their toes into the world of venture capital. But Young, along with fellow NBA vet Brandon Jennings, who owns a streetwear brand called Tuff Crowd, have dressed for the job they wanted—and gotten it. The NBA isn’t just the most stylish sports league on the planet, it’s also the only one producing fashion designers.

For Jennings and Young, brand-building was a way to capitalize on their reputations as cult-loved—if not All-Star—players. “It’s yours. It’s something that you own," Jennings said, when asked about starting Tuff Crowd. "We in the NBA, right? We have a lot of money. Say a guy makes 15, 20 million dollars. Your financial adviser is going to tell you, ‘Just invest in this company,' or 'Just do this and do that.’ You’re not really gonna be an owner of anything yet.”

Young agreed—saying that, at the very least, players should take ownership of their brand through personalized merch. “People are making money off of it, [so] why not do it yourself?” Young said. “Tyler Herro should have some dope ‘Hero’ merch. That’ll sell, especially during the playoffs. Instead of Nike making all the money.”

Their plans are a natural outgrowth of the player-empowerment movement that has swept through the NBA in recent years. In a sense, Jennings—with his unconventional career, which started in Italy when he was 19 years old—laid down the blueprint. LaMelo Ball dodged the NCAA in favor of playing overseas, and 2019 first-rounder Darius Bazley made headlines for skipping college to intern at New Balance.

“I always felt like every decision I ever made, I wanted to be the first," Jennings said. “It goes from being the first NBA player to go overseas before being drafted in Rome, Italy, to being the first to sign with Under Armour.” Now, he's a pioneer of another sort.

Young is only a little less subtle when looking back at his impact on the NBA style landscape. “Before Swaggy got there, they had to wear suits,” Young said. “They were dressing that bad: The NBA had to put in an all-suit restriction. They had no taste until I came in. Once Swaggy got in the building, they could wear whatever they want.”

And now that he’s out of the league, Swaggy wants to make sure his former colleagues have plenty of options. In order to serve their fellow NBA style enthusiasts, both he and Jennings take the lead in finding design inspiration for their respective brands, in addition to assuming all social media responsibilities. (I can confirm that they respond to all Instagram DMs themselves.) Young borrows from Virgil Abloh's design-by-WhatsApp strategy: “We have a group chat. I send them some pictures I like, then they source fabric,” he said. “If we want it done quickly, we get it made in L.A. Unless it’s cut-and-sew—then it will take longer. Either China or L.A.”

It’s not all CEO-ing and supply-chain management, though. The two function as creative directors as well, filling up mood boards aplenty. “When I got to come up with something, I go inside my bat cave, my swag cave. I come out with something magnificent. Sometimes I’ll be in there at, like, three in the morning.” Jennings, meanwhile, is an early riser: “I wake up every morning at 6 a.m., get myself together, think of some ideas.”

For all their skill as designers, both players’ most important role might come in the influencer marketing department. Jennings dropped off some early Tuff Crowd gear with Utah Jazz combo guard (and first team fashion head) Jordan Clarkson. “He just put it on. He blasted it,” Jennings said. “Jordan Clarkson put the battery in my pack to give me the confidence and ability to be like, yo, you got the next thing.”

Young also sought out Clarkson, who’d been a teammate with the Lakers, along with his longtime partner-in-crime, JaVale McGee. “They’re like my best friends,” Young said, “so I just tell them to put the clothes on and shut up, you know?”

Though neither Young nor Jennings is on an active NBA roster, you can see their impact in locker-room tunnels league-wide. When 24-year-old Warriors forward Kelly Oubre launched his own brand, Dope Soul, he sent Jennings a letter thanking him for the inspiration. “Brandon is doing something nobody expected him to do,” explained Oubre. “That’s why I sent him that letter, because I pride myself on not ever letting anybody put me in a box or saying what I can and can’t do.”

Oubre, whose leather pants and harnesses mark him as perhaps the most fashion-forward player in the league, is trying to push the hooper-turned-designer paradigm forward. “I’m learning [the digital production programs] Adobe and Procreate, so I can actually have a conversation with somebody who does designs,” said Oubre. “It’s very important, because I wanna do things that will last a lifetime, and not just be around for certain seasons.”

Young may have played in the NBA for more than a decade and won a ring himself, but he still felt starstruck seeing his brand on the floor at this year’s bubble-bound NBA Finals in Orlando. “The clock ends, and you go in the locker room with champagne and put some Most Hated on,” Young said, describing the ideal trajectory for his brand—and all of a sudden, it's reality too. “That’s surreal. That’s dope.”

Young was especially happy that it was Lakers center Dwight Howard wearing his gear. He’d started the company up, he explained, in a tough moment: “That’s what I made it for. At the time, they were just killing me in the media,” Young said. Hence the name: not Most Valuable, but Most Hated. So seeing a player like Howard—himself an object of perennial controversy—meant even more. “That’s why Dwight wore it: Going through a lot, and to end up being on that floor and winning a championship. What y’all gonna say now?”

Originally Appeared on GQ