JORTS ON THE HARDWOOD: DENIM AS COMIC RELIEF

JORTS ON THE HARDWOOD:
DENIM AS COMIC RELIEF
on my high school basketball team, we were met
with choruses of laughter when we entered the
game. I never wanted to be comic relief, to have
some jackass from the stands shout, “Shoot!”
every time I touched the ball—regardless of
which side of the court I was standing. As long
as I played basketball, I was a scrub. It made
me feel a little higher than a male cheerleader
and a little lower than not having made the team
at all. Josh Harrellson of the New York Knicks is
different. As he sits at the far end of the bench,
he is relishing his liminal place in the basketball
cosmos—a place that is perfectly captured by his
nickname, “Jorts.”
The alias owes its origins to a photo taken
of Harrellson wearing a pair of comely, kneelength denim cutoffs that was posted on a
popular website covering sports at the University of Kentucky, where he then played. Soon,
it became his nickname and a permanent part
of his basketball identity—one that he and the
rest of the Wildcat faithful would embrace.
Harrellson started wearing jorts every day and
tweeting as “BigJorts55.” The March 1, 2011
game during Harrellson’s senior year was officially renamed: “Jorts Day.” Like other sports
nicknames, Harrellson’s stuck because
it resonated on several, simultaneous
levels. Yes, he proudly brandished bottoms that were not-quite-jeans and
not-quite-shorts, but in some strange
way, the denim captured the 6’10”, 275
pounder’s awkward out-of-placeness on
the court. Too plodding to be a “small”
and too soft to be a “big,” Harrellson is as improbable a sight on the hardwood as his fashion predilection is on his body. He somehow
simultaneously elicits cheers and laughter.
In the NBA, it shouldn’t be this way. Though
you rarely get into the game when you sit at the
end of the bench, you are still in the top percentile of what you do on the planet earth—you
shouldn’t signify comic relief to the extent that
Jorts has this past season. As much as Jeremy
Lin captured the hearts of New York Knicks fans,
Jorts captured their funny bones.
And even in the NBA, Harrellson relishes his nickname, giving the sense that he is in
on the joke. Up until this spring, Harrellson’s
Jorts55 website sold his signature sandblasted
apparel—with his own “official Jorts logo” and
“signature embroidery.” The fans have noticed.
A couple of kid reporters sent by the KnicksNow blog even felt comfortable asking him
about rumors that he was the “smelliest player
on the team.” Guard Landry Fields advised,
“Don’t get stuck standing behind Jorts on an
elevator, trust me.”
The New York Knicks might not make the
playoffs. They might not finish the season with
SPORTS COLUMN
written by Joshua Neuman
286
a winning record. They might not even end up
improving upon their prior season’s winning
percentage. Nevertheless, there is a palpable
feeling of optimism in Madison Square Garden.
It would be ludicrous to claim that Jorts—who
at the time of writing is averaging 4.4 points
per game—is the cause of that optimism, but
he does provide the most apt counter-narrative
for an era of New York basketball that has all
too often valued style over substance. While
Amar’e Stoudemire collaborates with Rachel
Roy on a women’s clothing line and is said to
be inspired by Gucci, Dior, and Tom Ford, his
understudy, Harrellson, is inspired by side utility pockets and hammer loops.
Basketball, perhaps more than any other
sport, concerns itself with style. Consider the
cultural premium placed on the “slam dunk,”
which at the end of the day, is still worth the
same two points as an old-fashioned layup. Josh
Harrellson is a radical presence on the court because his very being flies in the face of style, calling into question its power over us.
1
Midway through this season, it felt like New York Knicks were
rebooting the 1985 comedy Teen Wolf with Jeremy Lin cast as
Michael J. Fox’s Scott Howard, Mike D’Antoni as
goofball coach Bobby Finstock and Harrellson as
“Chubbs,” Howard’s improbable hardwood sidekick.
Like Chubbs, Harrellson wears number “55.”
2
The New York Knicks subtle, yet palpable, shift of
values is perhaps most evident in a recent poll taken
on the UltimateKnicks blog, which asked readers
whether the team should start Jorts over Amar’e.