Short pants were thge norm until the Michigan 'fab five" introduced those damn bloomers. Bloomers??Why stop there? How about nylons and high heels? How can you show off your good-looking legs to the girls with those silly bloomers? One more thing---If you are home, wear white uniforms , and, when away, wear the darkest of your school colors for proper contrast on the court..today, all schools wear every conceivable color in the rainbow whether home or away..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...thye person who dreamed that up should be held in solitary confinement for 30 years . "you know what I'm saying?"

Shorts are getting shorter again. By the way, hope you are well. Bruce is self quarantining, which is hard for him

helltopay1 said:

---

Short pants were thge norm until the Michigan 'fab five" introduced those damn bloomers. Bloomers??Why stop there? How about nylons and high heels? How can you show off your good-looking legs to the girls with those silly bloomers? One more thing---If you are home, wear white uniforms , and, when away, wear the darkest of your school colors for proper contrast on the court..today, all schools wear every conceivable color in the rainbow whether home or away..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...thye person who dreamed that up should be held in solitary confinement for 30 years . "you know what I'm saying?"

---

+100. White should be the uniform color for home games. Period. And blue unis with gold trim on the road. And I won't even get into the wearing of dresses to play basketball.

Maybe if Cal could get back to the proper uniforms, they'd have a chance of getting back to their winning ways of decades gone by. I have a friend who made a study of basketball apparel, and he looked at the old Celtics of Bill Russell's day, and he claimed he had found proof that if the Celtics had opted for white Converse shoes instead of black Converse low-cuts, they would have scored 3-4 more points per game on average.

Grey is too reminiscent of gym rats, or of wearing grey sweatshirts in PE classes, where the kids who can't make the high school team play their basketball. Grey means mediocrity, both on the color scale and in basketball uniforms.

helltopay1 said:

---

Short pants were thge norm until the Michigan 'fab five" introduced those damn bloomers. Bloomers??Why stop there? How about nylons and high heels? How can you show off your good-looking legs to the girls with those silly bloomers? One more thing---If you are home, wear white uniforms , and, when away, wear the darkest of your school colors for proper contrast on the court..today, all schools wear every conceivable color in the rainbow whether home or away..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...thye person who dreamed that up should be held in solitary confinement for 30 years . "you know what I'm saying?"

---

Maybe you'd prefer white Speedos at home, blue Speedos away.

FUBU's down around the knees would have been real.

Would you guys consider these too baggy?

?resize=500%2C884

BC Calfan said:

---

Would you guys consider these too baggy?

?resize=500%2C884

---

This is getting comical.

This has to be photoshopped. That can't be a player in a real game.

Quote:

---

..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...

---

Except for my hair. And titanium bicycle. But I get your point and submit the second-worst color is brown. Which explains why the worst garment in the history of mankind, the suit, is so often gray or brown.

BTW I still miss Ed Gray. And Reshanda Gray.

oskidunker said:

---

Bruce is self quarantining, which is hard for him

---

Bruce who? tnx in adv

stu said:

---

Quote:

---

..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...

---

Except for my hair. And titanium bicycle. But I get your point and submit the second-worst color is brown. Which explains why the worst garment in the history of mankind, the suit, is so often gray or brown.

BTW I still miss Ed Gray. And Reshanda Gray.

---

I miss Ed Gray, but I don't miss Steve Gray, WAC player of the year in 1963. 26 points per game for St Marys. In high school, I beat his butt in the game of horse maybe 50 times, and he never paid off one single bet.

As for suits, this may be the only time I ever disagreed with you, but I like suits. They are the only garments I ever looked good in, except maybe for my high school basketball uniform. I was proud of that one.

How about this look?

This look is also nice

SFCityBear said:

---

BC Calfan said:

---

Would you guys consider these too baggy?

?resize=500%2C884

---

This is getting comical.

This has to be photoshopped. That can't be a player in a real game.

---

Man Skorts.

I recall reading that when Michael Jordan came into the NBA, he wanted to wear Carolina blue shorts under his Bulls shorts but the NBA/Bulls said that the blue shorts could not show. So, he got longer Bulls shorts to meet this requirement. At that time, "longer" meant mid-thigh, but supposedly that started the change. And of course the Fab Five carried it to an extreme which became the predominant fashion from the early '90s until the last few years when they've started to shorten again.

stu said:

---

Quote:

---

..the WORST color in the history of mankind is all grey...

---

Except for my hair. And titanium bicycle. But I get your point and submit the second-worst color is brown. Which explains why the worst garment in the history of mankind, the suit, is so often gray or brown.

BTW I still miss Ed Gray. And Reshanda Gray.

---

I miss Jaylen Brown and Jaelyn Brown, but I'm glad we have Joel Brown.

The St. Bonny guy with the long drawers is kinda cute. Maybe I'll ask him to go steady.

CALiforniALUM said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

BC Calfan said:

---

Would you guys consider these too baggy?

?resize=500%2C884

---

This is getting comical.

This has to be photoshopped. That can't be a player in a real game.

---

Man Skorts.

---

Didn't Jason Kidd wear Al Grigsby's shorts in one game - and looked something like in this photo.

01Bear said:

---

LOL! For you guys with scrawny chicken legs and underdeveloped glutes short shorts are no big deal. For those of us with tree trunk legs and solid rear bumpers, short shorts were and are ridiculous. In high school, I was forced to wear shorts that looked like Daisy Dukes on me; those were also the biggest shorts offered. I much preferred the longer and baggier shorts that allowed me not to fear ripping the seams every time I tried to box out an opponent or run up and down the court.

But yeah, let's just cater to the skinny old white guys and their sense of taste, let alone their underdeveloped body proportions.

---

Well, I hope you are not still playing, and if you are, I hope you will be able to adapt to playing in shorter shorts than the long ones you prefer, because the times, they are a-changing, and it has nothing to with race or age, buddy. Players are opting for shorter shorts now. And many of them are wearing tights and long socks, and exposing only a few inches of bare skin on the leg. Many players are even rolling their waistbands two or three times to make their shorts shorter. Boys, girls, it makes no difference. The trend and the style for shorts is getting shorter, and the day may be coming sooner than you might think that players of all age groups, black, white, or those of other races may be laughing at the old players like the Fab Five, and even MJ, wearing the ridiculously long baggy shorts of what will soon be history.

And do us a favor: Leave racisim and agism at the door when you post here.

https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/high-school-basketball/2019/01/31/short-shorts-basketball-nba-trends-ncaa/stories/201901290100

helltopay1 said:

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Short pants..

---

every.. single.. time.. i see this thread's "short pants" title i'm lost in Bobbie's 60s "Subterranean Homesick Blues" grabber in Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back" doc. (subversive allen "howl" ginsberg paying not a bit of attention from stage left)
# resistance is futile

SFCityBear said:

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And do us a favor: Leave racisim and agism at the door when you post here.

---

IMHO it's just fashion, short shorts need not be tight shorts. And some players wear tights under them anyway.

BTW I enjoy making fun of my own race and age groups.

1970 NBA finals



2006


2016

is this the basketball version of the debate about block lettering?

stu said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

And do us a favor: Leave racisim and agism at the door when you post here.

---

IMHO it's just fashion, short shorts need not be tight shorts. And some players wear tights under them anyway.

BTW I enjoy making fun of my own race and age groups.

---

Hey Stu, do us a favor and leave the selfism and funism out of it too

Dear me ...'skinny old white guys with undernourished lower bodies" ....yeah.....a glance at a psychology textbook should do the trick..these days, eating a chicken sandwich and walking around the block while humming a tune is considered racist..Too bad dictionaries have basically gone out of style..just yell racism and everyone is obliged to cower under the nearest bush. SFCB and I are too old to be intimidated. I know lots of nonwhite gals who look terrific in shorts..they never called me sexist or racist for ogling their well developed rears.."old white guys...yeah...that will bring us together...

01Bear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

And do us a favor: Leave racisim and agism at the door when you post

---

SFCityBear, brother I would encourage you to take the same advice. It's pretty damn racist and agist to expect everyone to cater to and adopt old white guy preferences as the norm. While I initially made my comment half-jokingly (though I admit, I should've added a smiley face emoticon), it appears your comment is entirely serious.

How many times have you come on this board to lament how basketball isn't played the way you prefer, any more? How many times have you lambasted younger Bears for not knowing the generations of Bears who played before they or even their parents were born? While sharing information about the past is welcome (and I truly do enjoy learning from you about Cal's basketball legacy, by the way), your criticism of young Bears for not knowing what you know is very much a reflection of the agism you claim to deplore.

Worse, your (and in this case, helltopay's) insistence that your sartorial choices are really what's acceptable has a ridiculously racist premise, namely that the standard body type to be used to determine what is appropriate is that of the skinny white athlete. I was never a skinny white athlete. Why should my uniform preferences be dictated by someone whose body dimensions drastically differed from mine?

Thanks to puberty, I gained about 25lbs, all of which settled below the belt, over the course of one summer. I was a short power forward/center on my high school frosh basketball team, but I could effectively box out taller opponents because of my stronger and thicker base. My thighs resembled those of a juiced Lance Armstrong. My glutes were proportional to my treetrunk-like thighs. My calves were the size of some grapefruits. I was entirely uncomfortable in those hot pants that passed for basketball shorts. Yet, I was forced to wear them because some old white guy determined that high school basketball players were all skinny, based on a history of predominantly white basketball players at my school. Never mind that for those of us (generally non-White) players with more mass in our hips, butts, and thighs, those "normal" shorts rode up and were little better than speedos.

Guess what, your (and helltopay's) pronouncements are pretty much indistinguishable from the decision (by whomever it was in my predominantly white school district who decided) to buy shorts that suited skinny white guys well but not so much the rest of us. They're rooted in the racism that uses the white body as the standard by which all things are measured. It may not be malicious or even intentional, but it marginalizes, minimizes, others, and even dehumanizes non-white bodies, nonetheless.

That said, I appreciate your link to an article showing that young athletes are starting to wear shorter shorts again. That's fine for them. I encourage them to find and wear shorts in which they're comfortable. Their choices, however, shouldn't be limited only to what some old dude (either you, me, helltopay, or anyone else) whose body type is/was entirely different from theirs determines is appropriate.

---

Well, I took your original post as serious and not jokingly or half-jokingly in any way. By the literal meaning of the words you used, it was no more than a racist and agist attack against one age group of one race. An emoticon might have helped me somehow understand how it was meant, but I can be pretty dense sometimes, especially when I get my hackles up, so I doubt it would have helped. My post was deadly serious, because except for the "LOL", I felt your post was intended to be taken seriously. As I read it, it sounded very serious, indeed, like you had some kind of axe to grind with old white men.

It is so easy to misunderstand something typed and sent electronically, and sometimes take offence at something not meant to offend. I suspect that most posts, messages, or e-mails intended to insult are ones that the poster would never say in person face-to-face. Now that you have told me of your well-developed muscular structure (and I am pretty sure you are much younger than me, and bigger than me), I will certainly have to tread lightly, and be careful not to insult you, for fear we might meet one day, and you would knock my block off.

Aside from that, it is apparent you either have not read, or have read a lot into my posts which were not there. My posts are interminably long much of the time, and I can understand in this fast-moving age, why someone might not read such posts carefully. First, I admit to lamenting that basketball is not played the way it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but what I continually try to point out is that some of the fundamentals of that era haven't changed and players of today would be better players if they had mastered some of those fundamentals. The pro players who attended Pete Newell's Big Man Camps for fifty years after he retired from coaching are a testament to this. They respected what he could teach them about how to play the game better. My biggest problem is with the rule changes that favor the offense, and make it near impossible for one player to stop another player from scoring. And it isn't old white guys who lament this. Old black guys like Oscar Roberston, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Julius Erving have lamented it also. Publicly. Allowing today's players to do many things that the older player were not allowed to do, and then to try and say today's players are better, is just wrong.

I have learned much about modern basketball from posters on this board. I try hard not to insult. I don't believe I have ever "lambasted younger Bears for not knowing players who played before" I know I have not "criticized young Bears for not knowing what I know" because I try very hard not to criticize persons, only their ideas, and usually only in a debate. Since I got to the Bear Insider, I have been ridiculed for even mentioning how basketball was played from say 1958 to first the three point shot attempt, and some of those playing methods ought to still be relevant. So I vehemently disagree with you that "I criticize young Bears for not knowing what I know". I try to tell interesting stories from the past, maybe to inform folks of what they may not know, and often get ridiculed for doing so, but I never intend to criticize a person, only to defend my position against insult and attack, by letting them know there are other ways to play this game.

How would you know what uniforms I prefer? I never voiced an opinion. I could care less. The long loose uniforms appear a little comical to me, and I said so. It doesn't mean I wouldn't wear one. I have never played in them, so I don't know if they would interfere with my running or dribbling. In fact, I had a sever case of eczema on my legs, and wore sweat pants at practice, so no one would see the sores on my legs. So I guess the long bloomers of the last 30 years or so would have been perfect for me, like they were for you, for a different reason. I really have no opinion of what is a good uniform. I remember my mother telling me she was upset when she went to some of my father's games. His team was the Demons, and sometimes in their games, one team would be wearing shirts and the other team was naked from the waist up, and mom did not like that one bit, shirts and skins. Fortunately she never saw any of my high school practices, where we always split into teams of shirts and skins.

Finally, I'm not understanding this basketball body type you talk about, "skinny white men". Compared to whom exactly? I'm sure there is an '-ism" for bias against body size or weight, but I haven't learned that one yet. I understand that some white men are skinny. I was white and skinny when I tried out for the Cal frosh, 5-10, 135 lbs. I was cut, told I was too skinny, and told I had to get up to 180 to make the Cal team. A year later, a teammate of mine from high school days, Denny Lewis, white and 5-11, 185 lbs, and he made the team. In fact all the guards on Cal teams of those days were short, and weighed just under 200 lbs. Bill McClintock in Cal's glory days was a forward who was 6-4 and 215 lbs. Harper Kamp is 6-8, 245. David Kravish, who always looked skinny, was 6-10 and 245. Lars is 7-0 and 250 lbs. Richard Solomon was 6-10, 235, and Robert Thurman was 6-10, 265. Who, exactly, are these skinny white men that you played against or that you see playing basket ball. Best rebounders in Cal history were Bob Presley and Ansley Truitt, both black men. Truitt weighed 215, and Presley even less. Skinny black men. Ryan Anderson, 240. People come in all sizes and weights. It is rare that skinny players make it into Cal rotations. Some have, but most of them, black or white are not skinny. You have to have plenty of weight to keep from getting pushed around. It is a physical game. Maybe you played on teams with some undersized undernourished white men, I don't know. The admin guys who make uniform decisions may have been skinny white men, for sure.

When I was a kid, I used to love watching Russ Critchfield shoot from long range. If only he had a three point line to work with. So when I think of a white guy in short basketball shorts, my mind goes back to the 60's and a guy who looked like this:

Dear Blue Your feelings are duly noted. You are entitled to your feelings. I trust you are sitting down..I am entitled to my thoughts and feelings too. That's the thing about Democracy. Shocking, I know.

When I think of short pants I think of this:

SFCityBear said:

---

01Bear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

And do us a favor: Leave racisim and agism at the door when you post

---

SFCityBear, brother I would encourage you to take the same advice. It's pretty damn racist and agist to expect everyone to cater to and adopt old white guy preferences as the norm. While I initially made my comment half-jokingly (though I admit, I should've added a smiley face emoticon), it appears your comment is entirely serious.

How many times have you come on this board to lament how basketball isn't played the way you prefer, any more? How many times have you lambasted younger Bears for not knowing the generations of Bears who played before they or even their parents were born? While sharing information about the past is welcome (and I truly do enjoy learning from you about Cal's basketball legacy, by the way), your criticism of young Bears for not knowing what you know is very much a reflection of the agism you claim to deplore.

Worse, your (and in this case, helltopay's) insistence that your sartorial choices are really what's acceptable has a ridiculously racist premise, namely that the standard body type to be used to determine what is appropriate is that of the skinny white athlete. I was never a skinny white athlete. Why should my uniform preferences be dictated by someone whose body dimensions drastically differed from mine?

Thanks to puberty, I gained about 25lbs, all of which settled below the belt, over the course of one summer. I was a short power forward/center on my high school frosh basketball team, but I could effectively box out taller opponents because of my stronger and thicker base. My thighs resembled those of a juiced Lance Armstrong. My glutes were proportional to my treetrunk-like thighs. My calves were the size of some grapefruits. I was entirely uncomfortable in those hot pants that passed for basketball shorts. Yet, I was forced to wear them because some old white guy determined that high school basketball players were all skinny, based on a history of predominantly white basketball players at my school. Never mind that for those of us (generally non-White) players with more mass in our hips, butts, and thighs, those "normal" shorts rode up and were little better than speedos.

Guess what, your (and helltopay's) pronouncements are pretty much indistinguishable from the decision (by whomever it was in my predominantly white school district who decided) to buy shorts that suited skinny white guys well but not so much the rest of us. They're rooted in the racism that uses the white body as the standard by which all things are measured. It may not be malicious or even intentional, but it marginalizes, minimizes, others, and even dehumanizes non-white bodies, nonetheless.

That said, I appreciate your link to an article showing that young athletes are starting to wear shorter shorts again. That's fine for them. I encourage them to find and wear shorts in which they're comfortable. Their choices, however, shouldn't be limited only to what some old dude (either you, me, helltopay, or anyone else) whose body type is/was entirely different from theirs determines is appropriate.

---

Well, I took your original post as serious and not jokingly or half-jokingly in any way. By the literal meaning of the words you used, it was no more than a racist and agist attack against one age group of one race. An emoticon might have helped me somehow understand how it was meant, but I can be pretty dense sometimes, especially when I get my hackles up, so I doubt it would have helped. My post was deadly serious, because except for the "LOL", I felt your post was intended to be taken seriously. As I read it, it sounded very serious, indeed, like you had some kind of axe to grind with old white men.

It is so easy to misunderstand something typed and sent electronically, and sometimes take offence at something not meant to offend. I suspect that most posts, messages, or e-mails intended to insult are ones that the poster would never say in person face-to-face. Now that you have told me of your well-developed muscular structure (and I am pretty sure you are much younger than me, and bigger than me), I will certainly have to tread lightly, and be careful not to insult you, for fear we might meet one day, and you would knock my block off.

Aside from that, it is apparent you either have not read, or have read a lot into my posts which were not there. My posts are interminably long much of the time, and I can understand in this fast-moving age, why someone might not read such posts carefully. First, I admit to lamenting that basketball is not played the way it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but what I continually try to point out is that some of the fundamentals of that era haven't changed and players of today would be better players if they had mastered some of those fundamentals. The pro players who attended Pete Newell's Big Man Camps for fifty years after he retired from coaching are a testament to this. They respected what he could teach them about how to play the game better. My biggest problem is with the rule changes that favor the offense, and make it near impossible for one player to stop another player from scoring. And it isn't old white guys who lament this. Old black guys like Oscar Roberston, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Julius Erving have lamented it also. Publicly. Allowing today's players to do many things that the older player were not allowed to do, and then to try and say today's players are better, is just wrong.

I have learned much about modern basketball from posters on this board. I try hard not to insult. I don't believe I have ever "lambasted younger Bears for not knowing players who played before" I know I have not "criticized young Bears for not knowing what I know" because I try very hard not to criticize persons, only their ideas, and usually only in a debate. Since I got to the Bear Insider, I have been ridiculed for even mentioning how basketball was played from say 1958 to first the three point shot attempt, and some of those playing methods ought to still be relevant. So I vehemently disagree with you that "I criticize young Bears for not knowing what I know". I try to tell interesting stories from the past, maybe to inform folks of what they may not know, and often get ridiculed for doing so, but I never intend to criticize a person, only to defend my position against insult and attack, by letting them know there are other ways to play this game.

How would you know what uniforms I prefer? I never voiced an opinion. I could care less. The long loose uniforms appear a little comical to me, and I said so. It doesn't mean I wouldn't wear one. I have never played in them, so I don't know if they would interfere with my running or dribbling. In fact, I had a sever case of eczema on my legs, and wore sweat pants at practice, so no one would see the sores on my legs. So I guess the long bloomers of the last 30 years or so would have been perfect for me, like they were for you, for a different reason. I really have no opinion of what is a good uniform. I remember my mother telling me she was upset when she went to some of my father's games. His team was the Demons, and sometimes in their games, one team would be wearing shirts and the other team was naked from the waist up, and mom did not like that one bit, shirts and skins. Fortunately she never saw any of my high school practices, where we always split into teams of shirts and skins.

Finally, I'm not understanding this basketball body type you talk about, "skinny white men". Compared to whom exactly? I'm sure there is an '-ism" for bias against body size or weight, but I haven't learned that one yet. I understand that some white men are skinny. I was white and skinny when I tried out for the Cal frosh, 5-10, 135 lbs. I was cut, told I was too skinny, and told I had to get up to 180 to make the Cal team. A year later, a teammate of mine from high school days, Denny Lewis, white and 5-11, 185 lbs, and he made the team. In fact all the guards on Cal teams of those days were short, and weighed just under 200 lbs. Bill McClintock in Cal's glory days was a forward who was 6-4 and 215 lbs. Harper Kamp is 6-8, 245. David Kravish, who always looked skinny, was 6-10 and 245. Lars is 7-0 and 250 lbs. Richard Solomon was 6-10, 235, and Robert Thurman was 6-10, 265. Who, exactly, are these skinny white men that you played against or that you see playing basket ball. Best rebounders in Cal history were Bob Presley and Ansley Truitt, both black men. Truitt weighed 215, and Presley even less. Skinny black men. Ryan Anderson, 240. People come in all sizes and weights. It is rare that skinny players make it into Cal rotations. Some have, but most of them, black or white are not skinny. You have to have plenty of weight to keep from getting pushed around. It is a physical game. Maybe you played on teams with some undersized undernourished white men, I don't know. The admin guys who make uniform decisions may have been skinny white men, for sure.

---

SFCityBear, I may have confused you with some other old Bears, then. Please forgive me if I unfairly accused you of lambasting younger Bears over their lack of knowledge. In my defense, all you old white guys look alike. (In case it's not coming across over the text, I'm entirely kidding with that last line. For starters, I've never seen pictures of any of you.)

As for the Cal players, the last Bear I can remember who wasn't built like a bean pole was likely Markhuri Sanders-Frison. While he was likely extremely cut/ripped/shredded, even Leon Powe looked a bit skinny in college. The same applies to Jaylen Brown, who was undoubtedly strong (especially for a freshman basketball player). Even Rob Thurman (he of the "Dunk! Dunk! Dunk" game in the NCAS Tournament) wasn't exactly really thicker than average (for his height, anyway). It's unsurprising then, that these young men would prefer tight short shorts over longer and baggier ones.

I, on the other hand, was built like a fire hydrant. I was short, stout, and I had a bolt on the top of my head. Okay, maybe not quite. It was more of a rivet. Seriously, though, by the time I started high school, I was built as solid as a tank from the hips down. This meant that unlike you, I had no difficulty putting on weight.

Reaching 150lbs was only difficult for me in college because I was approaching it from the other direction. Over a break during my first year at Cal, a high school friend of mine saw me with my shirt off and thought I was sick/dying because he could see my ribs. I weighed about 150-155lbs (after losing about 25-30lbs thanks in part to the horrible dorm food and regular cardio-intensive workouts). I had massive (albeit short) legs and an underdeveloped upper body. This was similar to how I was built in my freshman year of high school, when I wore those darn short shorts.

Back then, I was new to the post game. Growing up, I played point guard with my friends. Yet, on my high school frosh team I was moved to 4/5. I learned to bang in the post and even developed some low post footwork (I loved the Mikan drill) and a hook shot. If anything, I wish I got to learn under Pete Newell, back then. I have no illusions that I could've been a college big man (for starters, I was about a foot too short!), but I would've loved to have learn enough so that I could help teach and develop big men.

Like you, I believe knowing how to play in the post is a lost art, thanks in great part to the rule changes over the last decades. Honestly, I would love to see the rules changed to bring back the dominant low post juggernauts. Along those lines I also would love to see rule changes favoring defenders and defense. Ultimately, I guess I'm just an old Asian guy.