Pat Riley To NBA Coaches: Would It Kill You To Put On A Nice Suit For Once?

One of the best things about becoming older (as opposed to simply aging, which universally sucks) is the moment when the knowledge that there is nothing new under the sun becomes something more like instinct. Most notably, this comes through the realization that everything that is hailed as the next frontier of human development is actually just old ideas with newer and better special effects behind it, generally applied by people too young or disinterested to know better. In the case of our brand-new war, those effects come courtesy of people too old and lazy to think of other ways to distract the public. But only a fool would mistake any of this for anything new.

As an example, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is now 49 and is promoting a rematch of the 2015 welterweight title fight between him and Manny Pacquiao, who is now 47. Both need the attention and, it needn't be added, the money; most fights are made for those reasons, at least to some extent. But even the surface novelty is thin; young folks imagine that this is just them trying to get seats on the Jake Paul stunt-fight gravy train, when in fact what this is is just a gussied-up version of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch, only with real people throwing slow punches instead of claymation figures. Clay, for you slack-jawed college-aged mutants out there, was the CGI of yesteryear.

Which brings us, in a much scaled-down version, to the issue of NBA coaches' dress codes. Yes, this is a massive comedown from a war nobody asked for or bothered to justify, and even from the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight nobody asked for or should want to watch. But it's good enough for The Athletic, and its recurring series Peak, about the mental side of sports. Rustin Dodd elbowed through 1,100 words about Hall of Fame coach, menswear icon, and Miami Heat uber-executive Pat Riley urging a return to coaches wearing suits and ties on the sidelines—yes, even when New Orleans is playing Sacramento Thursday night. Maybe especially then. For Riley, it's a matter of principle.