Why Short Shorts Disappeared in the NBA
January 27th, 2012
It’s Gotta Be the Shorts: When Michael Jordan hit the NBA, he wanted to keep wearing his North Carolina shorts, for luck. To do this, he wore them under his NBA shorts, which forced him to wear longer, baggier shorts.
Michael Jordan’s UNC short shorts wouldn’t fit under his Chicago Bulls short shorts, so he had to wear baggy, knee-length Bulls shorts instead, as seen here. In doing so, he broke the mold set forth by players before him. […] But soon, these extra long shorts became the favored style. By 2003, almost every single NBA player had jettisoned the short shorts for the longer variety.