The Best Dressed Coach In The NBA (brought to you by Isaia)

As a life-long Celtics fan, I seriously considered switching allegiances, albeit temporarily, from Boston to Brooklyn this summer. Since Danny Ainge, the Celtics General Manager, had just completed a trade that sent the heart of the 2008 championship team to Brooklyn (Coach Doc Rivers having already been allowed to leave to coach the Los Angeles Clippers), the Nets seemed like more like my Celtics than the Celtics. And since I live in the tri-state area, there was the added benefit of finally rooting for a basketball team that I could actually see on television every night.

With that in mind, I tentatively tuned in to a few games at the start of the season. Finding the poor play of the Nets somewhat uninspiring, I kept finding myself distracted by Nets' Coach Jason Kidd's lapel pin. It was a bright red floral piece, which looked suspiciously like the Isaia logo. After freezing the video, it became clear that Kidd was in fact shilling for Isaia.

Assuming that the suits are in fact also made by the venerable Italian clothier, this would seem to vault Kidd into the pantheon of better-dressed NBA coaches (Craig Sager, a long-time Isaia loyalist, could be the best-dressed announcer; unfortunately, in addition to apparently being color-blind, he consistently fails to understand the meaning of the term pattern-matching).

However, based on repeat viewing, I would offer one suggestion to Coach Kidd: there appears to be quite a gap between the end of the tie and the waist of the pants. Ideally, the tip of the toe should just touch the belt or waist of the suit pants. Although a point guard, Kidd is still probably over 6 feet tall, so it could be that the tie isn't long enough to accommodate Kidd's size. This could be solved by bespoke ties, which could be given additional length. Or Coach Kidd could simply keep the suit jacket buttoned, obscuring the lack of length on his ties

Anyway, kudos to Coach Kidd. While I think he still has a ways to go to supplant Pep Guardiola as the most stylish coach in the world, one can certainly commend the effort to be better dressed.

Pep Guardiola continues to show the way.