The league’s current most recognizable faces—from Russell Westbrook to James Harden—are firmly at the forefront of the basketballs embrace of fashion. “The NBA is the most stylish league around, and the NBA superstars are the most stylish group of athletes of all time,” said GQ Style Guy Mark Anthony Green to Rolling Stone. “These guys are very into high fashion. The designers are paying attention to them.”

Many current players invest their money and their free time immersing themselves in the fashion world to varying degrees. Westbrook (with Honor the Gift) and Grailed favorite Nick Young (via Most Hated), for example, enjoy fashion enough to jump into the world of designing. Westbrook also wrote a book, Style Drivers, which delves into his notoriously ‘out-of-the-box’ fashion choices and how he uses clothes as an extension of himself.

“Today, NBA players have their own fashion lines and brand associations,” said Pratt Institute of Technology professor Adrienne Jones. “The everyday consumer has more access to their superstar. Even if the consumer cannot afford the high-end clothing, they can afford the accessories. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

“Everyone—manufacturers, retailers, the brands and the players representing them—is making money,” Jones continued. “David Stern’s dress code made the NBA’s turn to high fashion come sooner, but it would’ve happened anyway. If you look at hip-hop and fashion statements from the early-2000s, styles were very different than they are now. The same can be said for the NBA.”

All told, it’s an unlikely opportunity viewed as an indirect result of the league’s dress code being implemented all those years ago.

“It was like ‘OK, now we got to really dress up and we can’t just throw on a sweatsuit,” Wade said in a 2014 interview. “Then it became a competition amongst guys and now you really got into it more and you started to really understand the clothes you put on your body, the materials you’re starting to wear, so then you become even more of a fan of it.”

Not surprisingly, Carmelo Anthony who, like Wade, went from young dress code rebel to astute fashion fan, relishes the opportunity to embrace his fashion interests at work.

"I actually love it,” Anthony once said. “It gives us a chance to kind of be professionals and, you know, times have changed. I think now outsiders look at our league as a business now. So we represent that well now.”

There are a few areas where players can flaunt their sartorial selections on gameday. Most notably, there’s the pre-game walk through the tunnel—a de facto NBA runway, if you will. It’s the snapshot that’s going to get reposted left and right on every Instagram and Twitter account both before and after the match.

Go on UpscaleHype’s Instagram right now and you’ll see that NBA Playoff outfits are dominating the timeline, with some award show and red carpet Hollywood fashion sprinkled in for good measure. In fact, LeBron used the pre-game tunnel walk to unveil his new collaboration with John Elliott and Nike during the Eastern Conference Finals. Once LeBron was photographed in his new sneakers, it was reposted on every fashion and sports account. He garnered even more attention for the matching custom Thom Browne ensembles (a risky maneuver when considering that many of the NBA’s fans know next-to-nothing about Browne’s shrunken suiting) he and his Cavs teammates throughout the playoffs, which were routinely captured in the pre-game tunnel.

A pivotal playoff game between the Thunder and Rockets? Sure, fans care about the result of the playoff set, but you can bet there would be a lot of eyeballs tuning in to see what kind of outfits Westbrook or Harden put together too. Today's NBA generation embraces high fashion in a way the previous generation never did, using pre-game, post-game and sideline photo ops as a chance to show off the latest styles. Even if some don’t embrace it as much as others, they all are savvy enough to take advantage of the cameras.

Who knows if that would've been possible without the institution of the dress code? Would Nike athletes just simply wear Nike tracksuits on the sidelines and not put any thought into it? Most players look at it like Anthony—times have changed, in more ways than one.

Fansided, a network of sports blogs focused more on NBA on-court analysis, even posted a power ranking of Houston Rockets forward P.J. Tucker’s playoff outfits. While the site may not have the knowledge to know that one of Tucker’s shimmering jackets was Balmain, it’s important to see where the league has come in the 13 years since the dress code shook things up. Back then, players strove for comfort, today they strive to outdo their teammates with bright—often over-the-top—style. It’s enough that media outlets—including sections that normally don’t cover basketball—are paying attention. For example, The New York Times’ “Style” section is chronicling the sartorial exploits of Tucker and his teammate Harden throughout the playoffs. And truthfully, when Harden saunters down that ‘NBA runway’ in a Dries Van Noten short set, how can you not take notice?

Westbrook and Harden have become fixtures on GQ covers. Few other leagues have so many athletes embracing fashion in this way. Most players in other sports don’t think twice about what to wear for a postgame press conference or on the plane to an away game. They grab their nearest suit and never look back. NBA players use the pre-game tunnel, the bench and the post-game press conferences for what they’ve now grown to become: fashion shows.

“I don’t consider myself an NBA fashion guy,” Young told The New York Times. “I’m outside of that. I’m like Kanye, Pharrell. You could compare me to those levels.”

“We all in the NBA feel like we’re fashion gurus,” Young continued. “Fashion kings.”

“A stylist to me is just a waste of money,” said Russell Westbrook in a 2016 interview with
GQ. “It would take away from my creative side.” For the first time in decades, athletes are looked at as legitimate style icons without the need for outside intervention… even if you don’t always agree with their outfit choices.

For some, it’s become much more than just an interest in clothing. This sea change—one placing an emphasis on creativity and individuality—has really been symbolic of a league-wide evolution. Look no further than some of the players still on the court who are old enough to have been around since the rule’s inception. Most of today’s players weren’t around when the dress code was instituted, but players like James and Anthony fluctuated from open opposition to a recognition of the branding opportunities associated with it. That line of thinking is really what the league and its players have been about for a while now.

In the decade-plus since the institution of a league-wide dress code and a player-lead rebuke, the league has rebuilt its brand and positioned itself as a cultural beacon, often empowering its best and brightest stars to speak their minds on all types of issues (unlike, say, the NFL). NBA stars speak out candidly on social injustice and politics, and the players and executives seem to have struck a balance between the images the league would like to uphold and the real issues players are bound to have an opinion about. Gone are the days of Michael Jordan carefully tiptoeing between both sides of the aisle because both parties buy Nikes. Players are encouraged and empowered to express themselves. While rarely ever political, what’s a better form of self expression than deciding how to dress?

In recent years, even Iverson has come around on the dress code, but not because of the fashion. He now appreciates it as a way for players to be themselves, which was all he wanted years ago.

"I have no problem with none of the things that players wear today,” he told Complex in 2016. “I wouldn’t wear it. I don’t have any problems with what these guys wear because they got their own style and their own originality. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, man."

While fashion is a mere blip on the radar of the league’s evolution in the last 15 years, its embrace is a testament to the changing of the times in both fashion and the greater cultural landscape. While the NFL suffocates individuality, the NBA has grown to empower its players’ creativity. The league is now full of renaissance moguls—gifted athletes, deft marketers, art aficionados, voices for the voiceless—who have business to handle on a wide range of front. What’s the harm in wanting to look good while doing it?