01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 23, 2005

The new NBA dress code comes not without a certain slice of irony.

Isn't this what the NBA has been marketing for the past decade?

Isn't this hip-hop basketball world the horse the NBA has tried to ride for a long time now in an attempt to create a new generation of stars?

Just asking.

Check out every sneaker commercial for the past decade, every ad for a sports drink, every ad for athletic apparel, every ad aimed at kids who play basketball. Check out the new basketball magazines like Slam and Dime. Check out the half-time shows and timeouts at virtually every NBA arena, where loud music is as omnipresent as baggy shorts, where game enhancement has almost turned into an art form.

The common denominator?

It's all aimed at a youth culture that's become increasingly hip-hop in the past decade, one whose soundtrack is rap music and whose fashion comes from the inner city. Is it any wonder that this is not your father's NBA anymore? Any wonder that it's created a generation of players who dress like they've just come off the playground, regardless of the fact many make millions of dollars a year?

Nor should it be any wonder that already there's a certain discontent from from several NBA players, ranging from Marcus Camby's ridiculous statement that players are going to need a stipend for additional clothing, to Stephen Jackson's assertion that it's all about race, that it targets young black males, a potentially volatile claim in a league that's overwhelmingly black in a country where race remains the elephant in the national living room, the issue no one really wants to talk about.

So what's going on here, and what should we make of it?

I don't think it's only about race. Not in a league that underwent enormous popularity in the '80s and early '90s, a time when the vast majority of the players were black and two of them -- Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson -- became American icons.

But it is about culture.

There's also little question that David Stern's new edict is a reaction against ghetto culture. The tattoos. The cornrows. The jewelry. "Do-rags." Street cred. The gangsta look. The perception that too much of the NBA has come to look like an extension of the And1 Tour, the celebration of street ball and hip-hop culture.

And this gets complicated, too.

Because this is not just black culture anymore. Not by a long shot. Not when every other suburban kid is slouching around the mall with his baggy jeans and baseball cap turned sideways. Not when tattoos long ago became a suburban fashion statement. Not when rap music has been mainstream for a decade now, used by Madison Avenue to sell products. This is youth culture, it's marketed as such, and it rules all of popular culture in ways unamaginable a decade ago. This is what Stern wants to stop?

Too late to the dance, baby.

Way too late.

It's easy to understand why Stern feels he has to do something to try and change his league's image. Because a funny thing happened on the way to 2005. The cult of personality that the NBA rode in the Magic and Larry Bird era no longer works the same with the likes of Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant, in this age when street cred is often more important than stats.

For the first time in its history the league has a generation of young stars that a lot of fans simply don't like. Either that, or they can't relate to them. No small problem in a league that sells its stars, markets them, rides their backs.

More important, there is an increasing disconnect between the style of today's NBA players and many of the corporate sponsors, a disconnect between the players and many of the white, middle-class fans who buy the tickets, and keep everything afloat. Call it a backlash. Call it being turned off by hip-hop culture. Call it generational. Call it anything you want. For whatever reason it's there. Rest assured Stern wouldn't be doing this if he didn't think his league has an image problem.

And image problem it has.

The brawl last year at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan. Kobe's sex scandal in Colorado. The perception that too many players are out of control, that their combination of entitlement and too much money, puts their lifestyle in peoples' faces in ways it never used to be. The fact the league is not as popular as it was 15 years ago. The sense that something has to be done to bridge the gap between the players and fans, to make the players more marketable.

So Stern's demands are not unreasonable. Not in a business sense anyway.

And the NBA, after all, is a business, and in most businesses there are dress codes, either stated or understood. This one says players must wear business-casual clothes when attending team functions. It's not exactly akin to being in the Army.

"You have to listen to the people who employ you," said Jackson, who was quoted the other day saying he wore four chains to a Pacers' exhibition game in protest. "The people who are paying us make the rules. You need to abide by the rules or don't work. I want to work."

And one suspects that the overwhelming majority of players will agree with him, will ultimately see that it's in their best interest not to fight this, even if it seems the equivalent of suddenly trying to discipline the teenage kid after you've spoiled him rotten for years.

Will this help polish the league's image?

It can't hurt. Not in a league that gets younger and younger, more kids coming out of a culture where this is all they know. I suspect, though, it's all too little, too late, a public relations move designed to assuage older white fans, an attempt to tell them that this really can be your father's NBA again, even if society tells us it can't be.

But it's not without a certain irony, the NBA now trying to do away with the same thing they helped create.