Of all the looks that have made the NBA tunnel the most beloved and closely-watched fashion spectacle in sports, one in particular stands out: Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzman in a ginormous pink sweater—the sleeves so long that even on his 6’10” frame, they extended well past the length of his arms, swinging and swishing as he walked the halls of Capital One Arena. Photos of Kuzma in the Raf Simons knit instant went viral, prompting jokes, memes, and an Instagram comment from Kuzma’s former Lakers teammate LeBron James that read: “Ain’t no fucking way you wore that!!!” A fashion lover through and through, Kuzma was unfazed by the criticism. The 29-year-old basketball star engaged in friendly exchanges with those who derided the look, and more audacious game-day outfits followed: fitted red leather pants with a matching red-and-white leather jacket; a rainbow-striped open-knit cardigan, worn with no shirt underneath and and a candy-colored ski mask; black separates paired with an over-the-top fur coat. But that was then.
Fast forward to the 2024–2025 NBA season, which officially began
on Tuesday, and Kuzma has decided to retire his tunnel fits. Exit the attention-grabbing garb he’s become synonymous with, enter the simplistic sweatsuit he wore before last night’s game against the Boston Celtics—a version of which he plans to wear all season long.
“I don’t want to be a part of that type of community where you have to put on a fit,” Kuzma tells Vogue. “I’m really taking a backseat to all of that.” Chatting via Zoom from his home office last week, Kuzma explains that while he was “a pretty evident person within the tunnel years ago,” the commercialization of the space—and the pressure it puts on some players—doesn’t sit well with him. “I can speak from experience that when you’re a younger player, you don’t want to wear the same thing twice. A lot of times we get played into thinking, oh, we gotta switch it up, we gotta buy something new. And now we’re just buying clothes to impress people or to stand out. It’s ludicrous.”
This sartorial shift doesn’t mean Kuzma is offloading his designer wardrobe. (Though, if he were, that’s a closet sale we’d camp out for.) Rather, he plans to reach for those pieces on days he’s not going to work.