for the athletes to wear their gear during warmups as well as the game. It encourages fans to buy more team-branded gear.

Players can also be fined for violating dress codes during press appearances and some teams have rules for team travel.

Pretty much all professional sports leagues have rules of this sort: the NFL fines players for wearing the wrong brand of headphones, has rules forbidding messages written in one's eyeblack, wearing the wrong color of cleats, wearing brands other than those with NFL endorsement deals, etc. They fined Frank Gore twice for wearing his socks too low, for a combined $15K.

The NBA is comparatively lenient about this stuff (iirc the players only have to wear collared shirts to postgame media appearances,) but they're contracted with Nike to show off their gear and if anybody at Nike was impolitic enough to raise a stink the league would pretty much be contractually obligated to get the players to cut it off. Fortunately the current head of the league is the same guy who bounced the racist shitweasel who owned the Clips, and it looks like he's going to be impressively sensitive about social issues generally and race in particular. Considering that the other major sports leagues in the US are still sporting racist team names, he sadly stands out in this regard.

about the eyeblack--didn't that tebow person have a bible passage number in his?

Set African Americans back 40 years, embraced "thug" culture, embarrassed the city of Cleveland, etc, more reichwing talking points.

Good for them

Finally we have a the focus on an issue that affects people every day. Every 28 hours an LEO kills a black man.

PS thank you Kevin Garnett, Minnesota still remembers.