According to an article on Allen Sportswear website, Basketball's normal attire in the early 1890's at its inception was wool undershirts and trousers as this was the everyday apparell of collegiate student of the era. They played with what they had on for the day, there was no special garments or uniform to participate in this new game that was founded by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachussetts in 1891. This carried on well into the new century until the sport became so popular it was being played at on almost every Amercan college campus and many high schools.
The Drexel Dragons basketball team circa 1895. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons by an unknown photographer.
The Great Golden Age of sports took place in 1920, when the leisure time of the average American grew after a hard fought World War and advancements in manufacturing as well as people moving to dense population centers of the cities. Folks engaged more and more with each other socially due to these changes in society and one form of interaction was sports and the game of basketball. SOme time around 1920 organizers found that by identifying teams of players with different color shirts, the passing to the wrong team could be greatly reduced so school and team colors were being introdcuded to the hard courts just as they were in other sports to clarify the teams to participants and spectators alike.
Material Advancements of the Basketball Uniform
These early unis were described by Allen Sportswear as : "mid-length shorts and jerseys made of wool. The shirts were fastened like a current-day body suit to keep them from becoming untucked. Spalding created some of the first padded shorts worn by basketball players during this era. Women and children were required to wear kneepads during basketball games."
Can you imagine how uncomfortable it must have been to wear wool in a hot gymnasium or out in the warm sunshine? It must have been horrible, and the laundering of such materials, horrendous. Thankfully the textile industry made many advancements in the make of fabrics and eventually some of these suited the athletes for better comfort. Cotton, then later polyester and nylon athletic garments made molded themselves to the athletes for better form fitting comfort. The 1950s saw satin shorts on players held up by the use of belts. The shorts eventually got shorter, to briefs, the belts were done away with as elastic waists became the norm and the shirts were leaning towards the wear of track athletes in a tank style by the 1960s and 70s. This era of hoops also saw the shirts and shorts get tighter and more form fitting and adornments of long striped tube socks, canvas high top sneakers and head sweat bands became all the rage. A cotton-polyester blend of fabrics took player comfort to a higher level and the perfomances of athletes improved in part to this. The form fit style was getting a bit looser near the end of the decade, satin shorts were replaced by pinhole mesh material and jerseys became larger and less tight in style to allow for better player movement.
The decade of the 1980s saw even more advancement. MacGregor Sand-Knit became the official NBA supplier of apparel in 1982, paving the way for other manufacturers to follow suit and upgraded the garments of hoops players everywhere. Then a young Chicago Bulls star came on the scene. Michael Jordan was not only a great player but a fashion trend setter as well. He suggested to the big wigs at Champion Sports, who were making the NBA uniforms in the late 1980s, to provide longer shorts, rahter than the old nut huggers, so that when he and others bent over their hands were on fabric rather than their sweaty skin. Chmpion listened and so did Adidas that took over the role as the official uniform provider after the millenium changed and the nodern uniform was upon us.
