Where my braids at?

At the turn of the millennium, braids and cornrows were at the peak of their popularity, and they were all over the NBA.  The hairdos (is there a hipper word for this?) could be seen on pretty much every court on any given night, and the look's poster child was Allen Iverson.  One of the flashiest pure scorers in the history of the league, A.I. carried the Philadelphia 76ers' scoring load on his back, and he did it in style.  The intricate and ever-changing designs that graced his cranium were truly works of art, arguably as impressive as his crafty ball-handling and effortless drives to the basket on the court.

Iverson's braids helped to bolster his image as a tough guy thug (an image he openly embraced, or so it seemed), and the league caught notice.  A.I.'s emergence as a dominant and possibly even frightening new force helped to usher in a new era in NBA fashion, one that was embraced by all walks of basketball life.

Everyone wore braids back then, from blossoming stars:

To role players:

To championship starters:

 

To guys who legitimately like to fight:

But then, one fateful night in February of 2009, everything changed.  Allen Iverson, the same man who brought braids into the limelight, ruined everything.  Right before the 2009 All-Star game, Iverson, then putting up lackluster numbers as a member of a dysfunctional Pistons team, debuted a new look: a buzz cut.

A.I. abandoned his signature style, the look that helped make him famous, and his game suffered.  The one-time Superman looked more like Clark Kent both on the court and off, more Corporate America than basketball legend.  His decline could have just been the result of old age, but maybe there was more to it than that.  Perhaps Iverson was a present-day Samson, and his braids were the source of his incredible abilities.  Without them, his skills diminished, he drifted out of the league, and he became nothing but a memory.

This tragic fall from grace was enough to scare other players away from braids.  Guys like Bosh, Melo, and Rip followed suit, buzzing down to clean-cut crews (though Hamilton's decision to husk his cornrows was at least partly due to balding).  The look was so stigmatized that some youngsters, such as Brandon Knight, shaved their (awesome) braids before even going to college and entering the national scene.

Despite the downward trend, some players continue to fight the pressure from their leaguemates, including Ronny Turiaf and Michael Beasley (though Supercool Beas did give in and shave his head for a while), but this is only a fraction of the number there used to be, and it's just not the same.  Other players are searching for alternatives, but Shumpert's hi-top fade, Swaggy P's pseudo-Jheri curl, and whatever the hell Bynum's got on his head don't have the same history or carry the same clout.  Cornrows are sowed from seeds of love, and they are as intertwined with basketball culture as each strand of hair on a braided head is with its fellow hairs.  At least I thought they were...

The point of this tangent is that braids are sweet, and they need to come back.  They can be an excellent outlet for personal expression, and with a healthy row of corn on your dome you can rub the fact that you've got a luscious, full head of hair into the faces of your balding opponents--the ultimate form of trash talking.  So let's bring it back, guys.  Recall the beautiful and moving lyrics of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi, "Don't care about bald spots near your temples, leave me the C(ornrow)s and the B(raid)s, please!"  Or something like that.  Point being, people love braids, including Joni Mitchell, and you can trust her, because she was clearly ahead of her time.