More on that NBA dress code...

I blogged about this last week....here is Larry Elder on the same topic.

Former NBA player Charles Barkley supports the code, explaining, "Young black kids dress like NBA players. Unfortunately, they don't get paid like NBA players. So when they go out in the real world, what they wear is held against them." Barkley points out that, sure, when one makes $10 to $15 million a year, he can wear what he chooses and still navigate successfully through society. But for the rest of us in the real world, people make judgments on how one looks: "If a well-dressed white kid and a black kid wearing a do-rag and throwback jersey came to me in a job interview, I'd hire the white kid," said Barkley. "That's reality. That's the No. 1 reason I support the dress code."

Most businesses expect employees to dress a certain way, to project a certain kind of image. Detroit's black mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, for example, recently stopped wearing his trademark diamond earring. "That little insignificant thing in my ear gave off a bad spirit of rebellion," said Kilpatrick. "And it overshadowed the fact that I have a law degree, that I was leader of the House, that I've written policy, that I'm great at appropriations and grant programs, that I'm able to do things like put together the best emergency operations plan in the country."

Does the NBA suffer from image problems? Well, according to "Out of Bounds" author Jeff Benedict, 40 percent of NBA players' criminal records involve serious crimes, including sexual assault. And Sports Illustrated quoted one of the NBA's top sports agents, who said, "I'd say that there might be more kids out of wedlock than there are players in the NBA." And Len Elmore, an ESPN broadcaster and former NBA player said, "For numbers, I would guess that one [out of wedlock child] for every player is a good ballpark figure. For every player with none, there's a guy with two or three." And who can forget that brawl in Auburn Hills between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons, in which players actually went into the stands to fight?

The new dress code stands to benefit the players economically. The NBA players now receive 58 percent of basketball revenue. Assuming an NBA "bad-boy image" turns off sponsors and some fans, a spruced-up image may increase the economic pie for everybody — including the now non-bling-wearing players.