Someone Made a 'Shirtless J.R. Smith' T-Shirt and It's F*cking Fantastic
Like any great success story, J.R. Smith's path to an NBA championship ring involved great sacrifice. In his case, though, it appears he had to sacrifice his shirts. Like, all of them. Ever since he was pictured dousing people in champagne as the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated in Vegas last week, the guard has abstained from upper-body garments for pretty much all public (and presumably private) appearances.
All that has caused something of a stir online-what The Youth might call a viral moment. And, because this is America, it also spawned a flurry of entrepreneurship, best illustrated by a fantastic shirt featuring a photorealistic print of Smith's shirtless, heavily-tattooed frame.
It captures his "Black Jesus" tattoo, his "Mama's Boy" tattoo, and even the gigantic "Just Klownin" on his back:
Plus, it's a kind of metacommentary on shirt-wearing itself, an exercise in costume philosophy: If you wear a shirt of someone else not wearing a shirt, are you wearing a shirt? Does his non-shirt then become a shirt?
Nah, just kidding. "We did a mock-up of what the shirt would look like as a joke and it went viral," Fresh Brewed Tees owner Tony Madalone told ESPN, adding: "It's going to do well, but the truth is, we would have been happy to have broken even here."
Tony's just being modest. You can get the non-shirt shirt, should you so desire, at Fresh Brewed Tees for a cool $34.99.
[H/T: ESPN]
