Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, written by award-winning journalist Mitchell S. Jackson and published in September 2023 by Artisan Books, tells the story behind “the extraordinary intersection of high fashion and basketball.” The book is filled with iconic photographs of NBA icons from the past and present, and Jackson’s research and commentary illuminates the intersecting tales of American history, basketball greatness, and fashion.

Jackson spoke with The Under Review contributor Colin Bonini in August 2023 about the research and discoveries behind his work, the essence (and importance) of style, and some of the issues facing fashion and basketball today. The interview was conducted via Zoom, and the transcript has been edited for clarity.

Mitchell Jackson  is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won a Whiting Award and The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. His essay collection Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family was named a best book of 2019 by fifteen publications. Jackson is also the author of USA Today bestselling Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, described by the New York Times, as “A coffee-table book that elevates the subject to the same decorative status as a Dior or Gucci monograph.” Jackson’s other honors include a Doctor of Humane Letters from Lewis & Clark College; well as fellowships, grants, and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the NYPL, the Lannan Foundation, PEN, and TED. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Time, Esquire, and Men’s Health, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, Harper’s Bazaar, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Esquire. He holds the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professorship in the English Department of Arizona State University.

Colin Bonini (he/him) is a writer from San Jose, California. His writing appears or is forthcoming in The Under Review, The Masters Review, Wig-Wag, The Adroit Journal, Glassworks, The 2024 Driftwood Anthology, and elsewhere. He was named a 2023 Kathryn Blair Swarthout Fellow by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and his writing has also been supported by the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, the Craigardan Literary Arts residency, Gonzaga University, and Arizona State University, where he earned his MFA. He currently teaches first-year composition at ASU.

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Colin Bonini: Mitchell, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about Fly. I’m super excited for this. 

Mitchell Jackson: Thank you. 

CB: One of the major projects in Fly is to track the evolution of the NBA’s fashion against the major social, political, and technological events of American History. Could you break that down for people who haven’t had a chance to read the book yet? 

MJ: As a writer, that wasn’t my initial organization or structure. First, I thought I would just go by decades. And luckily—this is why you have a good editor—my editor was like, “Na, decades are kind of arbitrary. They don’t necessarily mark trends.” And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.” So it became a project of figuring out what the major trends were in the NBA, then doing enough research to have some theory on what was responsible for those trends. 

We started off, obviously, at the inception of the NBA, which is right after World War II, and what was happening with the conservation mandates. And it’s also pre-Civil Rights, right? I mean, the League started off white, but soon enough—’55, I think it is—they got their first Black player. It went from there. 

Then, thinking about the ’70s. When I think of the 70s, I think about Blaxploitation. You know, really ostentatious presentation. That felt, to me, like an assertion of freedom. Then we got the ’80s, with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, which I guess we could say is the golden era of the NBA. Right? Like, no Bird, no Magic, no NBA. (Definitely) not the 300-million-dollar contracts they’re getting now. 

Then Jordan takes it up a notch. He becomes a cultural icon. Magic and Bird were stars, but I don’t know if they were cultural icons. Jordan was probably the first cultural icon, which is why he has his own era. 

Then we get to The Iverson Era. Iverson was the front person for that era, but I mean, it’s synonymous with the era of hip-hop. If you think of Iverson coming into the League, it’s also around, maybe, the golden era or the apex of hip-hop. Nelly is selling big, and we get Eminem coming in, and we get Jay-Z, and we got DMX. This is when people start going diamond in hip-hop and it becomes a huge cultural force. I remember Jay-Z had a Hewlett Packard Commercial, and I was like, “Oh, now it’s mainstream. All the way mainstream, now.” Then we get into LeBron and The Decision and what that did for players’ autonomy and power. Later on, we get social media defining the current era. 

CB: Awesome. I think you’re right; it was a good call to go with eras rather than decades, cause there is so much overlap during those decades.  [The structure] came together really well. 

MJ: Thank you. 

CB: Thanks for that answer. You covered a lot of stuff I want to talk about later, with hip-hop and technology and all that, but my next question is about doing research. How did doing research into the story of the league, its fashion, and U.S. history reshape your understanding of how these three entities are intertwined? What discoveries were most inspiring, or infuriating, or telling during your research project? 

MJ: I’m really thinking about the inception of the League and what it was like in the 1940s. You know, predating when [the league] began, and knowing that this is pre-Civil Rights, and knowing what Black people were going through. That’s a history I’m familiar with. I’m not an expert in it, but I’ve written about it before, so I was really thinking about it. But one thing I had not thought about, really, was the way in which Americans were forced to conserve, and what that conservatism meant in terms of an outlet. As a paradigm, but also just practically—what you could and couldn’t wear. We’re pre-Civil Rights, so, as a public figure, you don’t wanna be a discredit to your race. And this is before they de-bug the idea of race, right, so race is very much a factor. I think that was maybe the most enlightening. 

I should back up and say I had also done research on the advent of basketball. I did go back to [James] Naismith and the baskets, looked at the photos. They were damn near playing rugby with the basketball. As a person who played basketball all of their childhood and youth, I didn’t know that. 

I also feel like this book is educational in a sense—not even in a sense. This book is educational. You can play basketball all your life and not know this stuff. Like, I don’t even know if the average, young NBA player knows about the first Black players that ever made it into the League, or knows about how basketball evolved as a sport. Maybe they don’t care; I didn’t care, then. Now—now I do. 

It was also exciting to find images. To really search. Like, to have a player’s name in my head, someone like, I don’t know, Wes Unseld. And then to go, “Okay, well let me find…” Cause you’re not looking for playing photos. You’re not looking for them on the court. You’re looking for, like, “What did Wes Unseld look like when he left the arena? When he was at home?” Doing that was fun. It was also a lot of work. 

The last thing I’ll say, which I did not anticipate, was that I wrote captions. I wasn’t supposed to write the captions initially, and I ended up doing them. I actually ended up developing a style for the captions and going back and rewriting them. They were actually mad at me because I rewrote them, and they didn’t want to make the edits. And I was like, “Na.” 

CB: Gotta do it. 

MJ: You know, ultimately, this is gonna be mine. There’s only one name on the cover. Not in arrogance, but like, this book is going to be a part of my work in a way that other people don’t have to have that responsibility. Not that they weren’t invested in it, but you know, when we look down twenty years from now it’s gonna be “Did this dude do it, or did he not do it?” And for me, every aspect of it has to be right, which includes the captions. 

CB: That’s good. And I mean, you can really tell that the captions have a flair to them. They have a style to them. A lot of the time, when I’m looking through books like this, that have a lot of photos—or even just in the news—the captions can be kind of… they don’t feel like they’re a part of the piece. Where [these captions] feel a part of the commentary. Kudos to you on the captions. Good work. 

MJ: Thanks.

CB: I don’t know how many people you interviewed during your research, but there are four interviews published in Fly. One with celebrity jeweler Chris Aire, one with PJ Tucker, one with NBA stylist Kalila Beaver, and one with Chad Avery, who curates the Instagram account @NBAFashionFits. What were some of the most delectable, most distinctive takeaways from speaking with those experts across such a large field of fashion? 

MJ: Takeaways… I mean, I think Kalila reiterated something I had been thinking about, which is the way the NBA players and hip-hop culture are one in the same. These guys are from the same neighborhoods, they have the same influences, and many times they do the same things. Just, one thing takes off, and you go that direction. Actually, she’s from Baltimore, and my friend [D. Watkins] just made a documentary about Baltimore basketball, which is interesting, you know, to think about [Kalila] and Carmelo. [Watkins] wrote Carmelo’s recent autobiography—I don’t know if I can say that; I think maybe his name is on the cover. I hope? So, yeah, just thinking about the influence of hip-hop. 

Also, you know, Kalila is one of the first stylists. This turn towards really focusing on the fashion created cottage industries. I think she represents something new in that sense. There’s Rachel Johnson, who’s probably the most well-known [stylist] because she started with LeBron, but Kalila’s right up there doing Melo. And you can’t divorce A.I.’s influence from Melo’s influence. 

CB: I thought those interviews were all fantastic. I went on Chris Aire’s website after reading, and I was looking at his jewelry, and I was like, “…one day.”

MJ: Ha! Yeah, yeah. He used to be my friend Damon’s jeweler, so I met him in the ’90s. He used to do a fashion show in New York during fashion week, and he would have like, Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford walking, but they would be in his jewelry. It wouldn’t really be about the clothes. And I was like, “Wow.” Like, “This guy’s really special. He knows how to do it.”

CB: He is. I mean, I don’t know a lot about jewelry. That’s not really something I’ve invested in yet, but some of those watches he makes, the red gold—beautiful. Oh my god. 

MJ: Yeah! 

CB: In your interview with Chad Avery, the curator for @NBAFashionFits, he says, “Style is unique to each person. You could be wearing the most expensive outfit in the world, and still not look fresh or fly.” 

It’s this concept not just of style, but of personal style. It’s essential to the project of fashion, but it’s also essential to Fly, right? In your eyes, what does it mean to make a look yours? What does it take to develop a personal aesthetic that turns into a style over time? 

MJ: I think it’s not unlike developing a style on the page. I think for you to do that, you have to have a POV. Like, you have to understand where you are in relationship to the culture. To the influences around you. You have to understand what you believe in. I think you can’t do it, you can’t really have style, without those things, cause then you’ll be just pushed any direction and go. 

Styles are so fleeting, right? If you don’t have a POV, then when the next thing comes, you just gonna do it because that’s what’s popular. I think that’s really important. And I think as a young person obviously, and a young writer like you, you’re still finding that. But once you kind of get into a place where you’ve found your voice or you’ve found your aesthetic, I think it’s much easier to curate. 

Like, for me, there was a time when I moved to New York and I was just being pushed around. There was some times where I had like, cowboy belts and, you know, cowboy shoes and ruffled shirts, and I would come home, and I would go to the barber shop, and he'd be like, “Man, what are you doing?” And I was like, “Yeah… I don’t know.” It was really appropriation, right? I’m not from Texas. I don’t wear cowboy boots or big buckles. At a certain point, I figured out that black and gray were going to be my baseline colors. And it really helped me curate. When I was looking at a hundred different things, I would go well, only twenty of them are black and gray; and then of those things, now only seven of them are actually are my aesthetic. And then you get into, you know, other kinds of choices to make. 

It’s really a narrowing. Once you have a narrowing, then you can be more creative. It forces you to be more creative. Like, when you’re writing a poem, right? And you gotta write in form? You can do a lot of things inside of that form, but you still got strictures for you. I think for me, the really stylish people find a way to do a similar thing again and again. Which is not to say you don’t change, you don’t evolve; but to me, that’s really interesting. Like if this is a guy’s aesthetic or a woman’s aesthetic, then they keep finding ways to refresh that? That’s amazing. 

CB: I never thought of it so much as a way of putting strictures on yourself and then working within that. That’s really cool. 

You talked a little bit about how you decided on blacks and greys. Beyond that, what are some of the other strictures you’re giving yourself? What do you go for in an outfit or a piece of clothing? Like, what details are important to you? What accessories are you going for? That kind of stuff. 

MJ: I know I keep making this about writing, but it really is the same thing. So, it’s texture. In a sentence, I like texture. I like long sentences, short sentences. I like long words, short words, you know. So, in fashion, I think about fit. For example, sometimes I’ll have a really big silhouette. I’ll have baggy clothes, or baggy pants and a baggy shirt. Other times I want to vary the silhouette. So I have something really tight up top, and then some baggy pants; very seldom the other way around. But I also think about texture, right? Sometimes I have like, some nylon stuff on, and then I know, okay, I need some wool up here, or I need cotton up here. I think about the heel on the shoe. Do I need a thick heel, or do I need a more low-profile shoe? Do I need a sneaker? I’ll mix ’em. Recently, I been doing a lot of wearing like, basketball shorts with white socks and loafers. It’s the ultimate clash of things that don’t belong together, but I think belong together. 

One personal aesthetic is that I never mix my metals. Like, these glasses are gold; I’ve got two gold chains on. I would never wear silver glasses and a gold chain. If I have on one metal, it’s that metal all the way through. But that’s a personal thing; I know people who love to mix metals. Now, if I had, you know, a two-tone watch, it would be a different thing. I could go to different places. But I don’t have a two-tone watch. So, for me, it’s always matching my metals. 

CB: Thanks for that. From the NBA and elsewhere, when you were putting together your aesthetics in your fashion, who were some of your inspirations? Also, since we’ve talked so much about writing—were there any writing inspirations that influenced your fashion and your aesthetic? 

MJ: Let me see… I think by the time I started putting this book together, I had already kind of developed a personal aesthetic. That’s maybe part of the reason they came to me. But I do think there are people’s style who I appreciate, who are doing, in the League, what I value. 

Jerami Grant, who’s a Portland Trailblazer, I think his aesthetic is kind of similar to mine if I were twenty-five years old. I like what Devin Booker does, because he’s found the lane. He basically just reinvents that same look, which is a very hard thing to do. I’ll also be interested to see where he takes that look. 

Who else do I see? Serge [Ibaka]? I like what Serge does for big guys. Very hard to be fashionable as damn near 7-foot guy. 

In terms of writers, I have a good writing friend, Jason Reynolds. Jason and I basically text every day, and a lot of our texts are not about writing. They’re about fashion and jewelry and culture. When we met, we were teaching at Lesley, a low-res program in Boston. We would walk from where they house the faculty to the school, and we were having conversations about fit and about fabrication. That’s one thing; when we go back to fashion, I’m really big on fabrication. It has to be well-made. I can feel the material. I know one wool from another. One nylon from another nylon. One good leather from a not-good leather. So we talked a lot about that, and that’s really how we bonded. I mean, we talked about writing, but Jason loves vintage watches. He loves Golden Goose sneakers. And he also has an aesthetic similar to mine in that he only really wears black. So we’re always kind of pushing each other. Like, I’ll see him on TV and I’ll text him, “Hey man, what was those pants you had on?” Or he’ll do the same for me. 

CB: I love that you have somebody who’s also a writer, but your relationship is really built around that fashion. That’s cool. 

All right, these questions are moving over to how this book is in conversation with some of your other work and some of your other interests and activist projects. In Fly, you’ve curated photographs of boundary-pushing, provocative fits from Wilt Chamberlain, Dennis Rodman, Russell Westbrook, LeBron, and ample others. How do you see fashion as a battlefield? What power comes with what these men, and with what we are all, wearing? 

MJ: Fashion is a battlefield because it’s not static. In order to be fashionable, you have to understand where the culture is and where it’s heading in order to have influence. I don’t know if you necessarily need that to be fashionable, but I think you gotta know what’s happening in order to kind of see where things are headed. In that sense, everybody can’t do it well. 

Like, I was talking to a friend, and they said, you know, fashionable people are really a small, small, small group. I think they said like five percent of the world might be fashionable. If you think about that, if I go into a room, I can look around, and immediately I can go, “Oh, this person knows what they’re doing.” Not to say people are not well-dressed; there’s a difference between being well-dressed and fashionable. A fashionable person is going to let you know that they are fashionable every single time you see them. They’re going to do one thing that separates them from the other person. They could have on the very same thing, but they might cuff their jeans a little different, or roll up one sleeve, or flip their collar. Like, they’re gonna do something that separates them from the other person. In that way, it’s a battlefield. It’s like, if we all got the same material, then how do we separate ourselves? Which gets to the NBA. 

Everybody in the NBA—from the 12th man, now, to the max contract dude—has enough resources to basically buy what they want to buy in terms of fashion. So then: how do you separate yourself? Well, one way to do it is to get a stylist. But I think you can see the guys who are wearing exactly what their stylist tells them. And then there’s the guys that actually have a personal style, and the stylist is helping them enhance that style. There’s a difference between the two. People who can really, really do it—they understand that. They can see it. 

So yeah, I think it is competitive. It is a battlefield in that way. In the NBA, these guys are all competitors. So now, if you’re a star on the team, and you care even a little bit, you got the resources. You have the access. Now how do you separate from the other? Because if you go and look at the LeagueFits or the NBAFashionFits or whoever is taking note of these guys, the person with the most money is not always the person they’re saying is the most fashionable. I think that’s also something they care about. So yeah, yeah. Definitely a battlefield. 

CB: Just now, you were talking about Instagram, the Tunnel walk, all that. In Fly, you dub the most current era, the most recent era of NBA Fashion, the Insta Tunnel walk. Is there anything you think sets this era apart from the other epochs in the annals of NBA fashion?

MJ: Yeah. I mean, it’s Instagram, right? It’s that these players now can command their own audience any moment of the day. And there’s a metric for it. It’s not only that you can command a great audience, but immediately, you can see how far and wide what you did spread. Think: if you couple that with the amount of resources these players now have, which are, you know—I mean, I don’t know if you’re paying attention to free agency, but like a 300-and-something million dollar contract now—that’s a lot of wealth. That’s generational. That’s generational wealth two times over. If you couple those two things, like that’s just—Never! We’ve never ever seen that before. 

And I think the fact that the League is now behind it—the League sees the value in allowing their players to express themselves in this way—it’s being accepted and promoted. The players recognize their power, and they have a metric for that power. Back in the day, people were like, “Michael Jordan is the most popular athlete in the world.” Well, I mean, those were polls, but we didn’t have a quantifiable metric. We knew how many people were buying Jordans, or at least Nike did. But now you can see this person has 75 million followers, and they post in one thing, and 300,000 people went and liked that. And that’s great if you’re in marketing, right? Like how much better can you get?

CB: When I was reading the Tunnel Walk section, and even as we’re talking, I’ve been thinking a lot about how people like NBA stars—who have this vast reach—how much their fashion might be driven by the potential promise or the potential profit that could come from going viral. 

MJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

CB: The question I have—and I’ve tried wording it different ways—is how, in this Instagram era, can we keep personal style from becoming over-commodified by an algorithm? And I guess, part two: as consumers of fashion, how can we support that indulgence without becoming, just, capitalist-driven consumers? 

MJ: I think the great thing about fashion is that the heart of fashion is a question. “What’s next?” Once something gets commodified—the people who commodify it are late to the party. All the corporations that are now putting step and repeats in the tunnel are late. In order to remain fashionable—which is, I guess, we can say synonymous with being cool—you have to find a way to still be cool even if they’re trying to take what you do and commodify you. You can’t stop capitalism. But this part of [capitalism] is predicated on you being cool, which means you gotta figure out a way to change. And once everybody gets on it, you gotta be off of it. Fashion is kind of inoculated, or maybe anesthetized, to corporatization in that way. The moment everybody knows about it and is doing the same thing, it’s not cool anymore. Which means you have to be on the next thing. 

That’s the heart of what fashion is: What are we doing next. Every season, they’re bringing a fashion show out, and they gotta have a new look. They can’t do what they did last season. If you do a spring fashion show, you can’t even repeat that in fall, you know. It’s always what’s next. What’s next. And those what-nexts are always informed by what’s happening in the culture, which is constantly changing. 

CB: That segues into the next thing I’m thinking about. When you were talking about Kalila Beaver, you both mentioned recycling and reusing items of clothing. It’s 2023 right now; it’s the hottest year on record, so I think sustainability is pretty crucial to developing a holistic view of fashion, right? How do you think that the need for sustainability—and the need to keep doing fashion without contributing to environmentally destructive chains of consumerism and production—influences fashion? How do you think that will influence the future of fashion? 

MJ: I mean, think about Stella McCartney. Stella McCartney doesn’t use any leather; she uses only vegan materials, right? So that’s one way. You could just say, “I’m wearing Stella McCartney.” There’s obviously so many brands that make faux leather shirts and pants and any kind of stuff. So I think one way is to support brands that are using materials that are ethically smart. 

There’s obviously, yes, recycling. There’s buying used. There’s selling used clothes. There is now, you know, what they’re calling quiet luxury, which is no label stuff. I feel like quiet luxury, maybe down the continuum, means that you’re able to wear the same thing more often because it’s not as identifiable, right? Like you got one gray shirt. It’s no logo on it, so you can wear that shirt four or five times as opposed to what we had in the 2000s with like, big logos and repeat logos. I think there’s a way in which quiet luxury is pushing us towards that. And then, obviously, the resell market is huge. I was just looking through my closet today for something to give to TheRealReal. 

But ultimately, I think rich people who think they’re cool… Once everyone gets into resale, or once everyone starts using it, [the rich people] are just gonna get off of it. Which means they still have the resources. You know, these are the same people flying around on private jets. Like, I don’t think that they’re going to change. Really, I think they might be doing something different now because it’s cool to be doing something different. But I actually don’t think the majority of people are thinking about sustainability and eco-conscious clothing and style. I don’t think there’s a lot of people doing it to be honest. Yeah… Which is to our detriment, right. Like I’m in Phoenix, which is 115-degree heat. 

CB: I know! You just wrote about that, too. I’m trying to grow into my own fashion and kind of figure it out, but I’ve just been thinking so much about like, how do you indulge in fashion? And how do you do it being sustainable? And while staying eco-conscious? It’s a tough question. 

MJ: I mean, you really gotta do a lot of research into the brands. Even if you’re buying, you know, used or vintage stuff, you still have to know, like, “Okay. Stella does this.” I was just researching this brand last night, I can’t remember the name of it—like, Identity something—and saw how he did everything hisself. He was sourcing the material, fabricating materials in his own country.  But it’s like, how many people are going to do that amount of research to buy a shirt? 

CB: Exactly. And also, in regards to what you were talking about with fashionable people and wealth, a lot of the times, getting into fashion can seem quite restrictive because of the level of access you need, right? Once you’re there, if the people you’re buying from, these producers, aren’t doing it in an eco-conscious way, like, what option is there? It’s tough. 

MJ: Yeah. It’s tough, man. 

CB: I don’t know, man. When I have the money, I’ll let you know. 

MJ: Ha! 

CB: You’ve talked a lot about hip-hop, and you recently published a list of the five greatest rappers of all time in your Esquire column. It was a great article, and you end it—I’m just gonna read the ending: 

“My list. Why does it, or any damn list, even matter? Because hip-hop was born as a way for Black and brown people to fight oppression. Because what better way to assert worth than to be judged excellent if not the most excellent in a given field? The list of the top five all-time MCs counts because hip-hop is American. And greatness, or so the propaganda goes, is the American way.”

I love that ending because I feel it expands and questions the idea of American greatness. I also like how this conclusion roots rap music in its history of resistance. Right? It’s a form of greatness that comes from a sort of subversion. Back to Fly: How do you see the sport of basketball, and all that comes with it, further expanding the cultural understanding of both what “greatness” means, and, when we say “American,” what “American” means? 

MJ: Man. First of all, I’m glad that you loved that last paragraph, and I’ll tell you something from the writer in me. It was in print, and I had seen it in print, and they didn’t run it online for several weeks. And then they sent me a preview of it, and the editor had moved what was that last paragraph up to like, the third paragraph. And I was like “Whoa, wait, what happened here? I intended this as the ending.” He was like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see that. It’s better at the end.” I’m like, “Yeah! That’s where it’s supposed to be!” 

I’ma be honest, man. I don’t see… I think that basketball is so far away now from the roots of hip-hop. In the sense of it being a subversion or an act of resistance—that’s over. Like, I was just talking to my friend who was a former Rookie of The Year, and I was telling him… I was like… Man, it’s so strange. If you listen to the people prognosticating on our economic status, everybody’s like, “Man, we this close to a recession every other week.” You know? And the housing is going down, and mortgage rates are going up, and people are losing their jobs, and AI is coming and taking over the world. But somehow the NBA and the sports leagues keep getting bigger and bigger TV contracts and keep rewarding their players with more and more money. 

Can both of those things—well, they are I guess—be true? That we are headed in [one] direction as a country and as individuals, and then the sports leagues are headed the opposite direction? How long can that last, right? How? I think, in our lifetime, we’ll see the first one-billion-dollar sports contract. You know, if you can get it… If I can get it, I would love to have a billion-dollar contract, too. But on the other end of that, it’s like, how can we have a billion-dollar contract when Meta is laying off all of their people? Or Apple is—I think they had their lowest earning quarter in years or something. I think because there’s so much money involved in the NBA, and everything is corporatized, even the fashion, that the era of players being subversive is over. 

And if we think about the NBA now, we can’t disconnect it from the NIL and what’s happening in college and high school, right? Where players are now pro. It’s not semi-pro. Once you get paid, you’re a pro. So now we got capitalism at every level of sport, which means it’s no longer pure for anyone. That thing is dangling out there in front of you. When people invented hip-hop, nobody was thinking about getting rich. I mean, maybe they wanted to get rich, but like, no one knew this was an avenue to get rich. Corporate America was not on them parties with Kool Herc in Soundview, you know? But now, there is not a youngster playing ball that doesn’t know. If you’re a fifth grader right now, by the time you get to the League, there might be a 500-million-dollar max contract. And you know this. So yeah, I’m kind of sad, because the purity of the game… I think it’s forever lost. 

CB: Damn. Damn… that was a great monologue, Mitchell. 

MJ: [Laughs]

CB: That was heavy. Man. 

I’ve got one more question, and it’s fun. It might be really frustrating to you, but for me, it’s fun. In that same article about hip-hop, you define greatness as “excellence repeated.” With that same metric, “excellence repeated,” and with a March Madness twist, what players in the NBA, all time, would you put in your Final Four when it comes to fashion? 

MJ: Final four… Huh. I’m gonna put Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. You gotta put Walt Frazier in there. I’m gonna put LeBron in there. I’ve seen his style evolve. I really love what he does with jewelry, but most of all, LeBron dresses like who he is. He not regular, and he never looks regular. 

Final Four, right ? So I got one more person? 

CB: Yep. 

MJ: I’m gonna put… oh, man. Let me back up. Let me back up. 

CB: It’s always the fourth one. 

MJ: Yeah. Okay, I’m putting these two at a tie. Dennis Rodman, who set the bar, who really set a precedent that is being repeated right now. 

People love Russel Westbrook’s style; I do not. But what I do think Westbrook does is push the envelope. For that, I’m thankful. You gotta go farther than the boundary to know where you gotta pull it back to. And I think he’s really great at doing that. Like, he really pushed it far, and then he kinda reels it back, and then he’s in a sweet spot. 

So I would say Westbrook and Rodman, because they both really did the same thing. Well, I guess Rodman never really reeled it back, but he pushed the boundaries very far—ahead of his time, too. We don’t get a Russell Westbrook without a Dennis Rodman. And then LeBron for his star power and always dressing like a GOAT. I should’ve put Iverson in there. Ok—I’m taking SGA off and putting Iverson, because he’s the cultural icon for an era of the league. And then Walt Frazier who was the first guy I think to really be recognized as an NBA fashionista, though. 

CB: Right on. So Walt Frazier, Alan Iverson, LeBron, and then Dennis Rodman/Russel Westbrook, tied. 

MJ: That’s it. 

CB: That’s not a bad list, that’s not a bad list. I was wondering if you were gonna put Wilt Chamberlain on there. 

MJ: Oh, yeah! So he’s great, but then it’s like, “Walt Frazier or Wilt?” You really could go with either one. But Walt—I don’t know, man! Cause actually, Wilt pre-dates Walt, too. God, dog. It’s hard. It’s hard. If I had another duo, I would put them together. But If I have to pick one, I’m gonna go with Walt, still. 

CB: Last question: Where can readers, buy Fly? And you got anything else coming out? Or anything coming out from people you know that you wanna talk about or want people to be aware of? 

MJ: You can buy Fly everywhere. I mean, it should be in all your local bookstores. Bookshop.org if you wanna go independent. You know, you wanna fight the giant. Or Powell’s. That’s from my city, the biggest independent bookstore in the country. Yeah, go there. 

I’m working on a profile of Al Sharpton, and I’m really excited about it because it’s the most time I’ve ever spent with a subject. I’ve been to six cities with him, over probably about seven, eight days—different times, obviously. We’ve gone from strangers to like, “Hey, Jackson.” You know? Like, “How ya doing?” I’m excited about that. I’m doing another profile of a guy who’s a local drug kingpin from my city, that I know, for the Times.

Books! There’s so many great books. My colleague, Safiya [Sinclair], has maybe, probably, the best memoir in recent times coming out in September. I just finished reading Jesmyn [Ward]’s next novel, which comes out in October. Which is amazing. Go watch D. Watkins’s [We Used to Win Here]. It’s a documentary on Salon about Baltimore basketball. Pick up Jesmyn's book in October. Pre-order it now. Pre-order Safiya’s book now. And look out for these profiles. And don’t tell my fiction editor I’m behind on when I said I would give her work.