The Melo Backpedal

Some of you may have thought that the complete wisdom on facial hair in the NBA was all contained in my post on beards in pro basketball.  But there’s much more to be said!  Part of the reason for this is that there is no end to the bad beards in the NBA.  In fact the problem is just getting worse, and even though many fans have read my beard post, they continue to condone this bad behavior, or at least they’ve put forth very little effort making fun of or wagging their fingers ar their favorite players’ face-fashions.  A few of the bad examples are to follow.

Before, I wrote, “Pau Gasol is the only Spaniard I’ve ever seen who looks like a caveman.”  Well, now there’s another one.  Am I surprised that it’s Pau Gasol’s brother?  But look there!  There’s another player from a totally different family and a totally different country who’s attempting to look like a member of a boy band who’s been shipwrecked for three days.  This second guy happens to be married to the former Miss Turkey, who, I’d bet, has fine grooming habits.  Stop the madness!

This all is very hard for me, because I’m a big fan of some of these players.  Take my favorite player in the NBA right now, Deron Williams.  You look like a fool out there, Deron!  Facial-hair-wise, I mean.  Last year, you had this weird, negative-sideburn thing going, even though I say that in most cases, less is more and you can add by substraction.  Now you’ve got some more nutty ideas.  Check this out, NBA fans:

The bad example of over-grooming (exemplified in players like D-Will and Dwayne Wade) is now being picked up by impressionable rookies.  Take this silly person who went to USC:

He seems to think he’s quite dapper, but I beg to differ.  Shave under your beard, not over it.  Simple rule.

But let’s not be too mean to players like Williams and Mayo.  At least they’re trying.  Meanwhile, the rest of the NBA is making a real point of not trying at all, or of deliberately thumbing their noses at all of us who are required to have a decent looking face every day.  Take the criminally insane Drew Gooden:

Personally I’d much rather go back to the days when Shaq didn’t have to wear “business casual” when he was injured on the sidelines, if we just could agree to stop this NBA freak show.  David Stern either agrees that Shaq wearing pajamas on the sidelines is better than Drew Gooden looking like this, or else he’s lost his mind.  But instead of ridiculing this sort of thing, we’re waging a culture war against–what?  Mustaches.  No, I’m not talking about German guys making Eiffel towers out of their mustaches for a contest.  I’m talking about standard old-school staches like this one on Kurt Rambis:

Yes, it sort of looks like a caterpillar.  But so what?  That’s how they did things in the 70s and 80s.  Now you look at the Lakers bench and Rambis and Jackson have shaved their mustaches and to be honest it looks sort of weird.  At any rate, their uncouth Magnum PI imitations and shaggy mullets were downright sane compared to our current tattoo-artist/ hobo look.  Our current NBA players are making well-groomed people like Ray Allen look like they belong in some feel-good, short-shorts Disney throwback movie set in the 1960s

1. Just because you have a beard, doesn’t mean you don’t have to shave anymore.  There is no approved beard style that does not require daily shaving.  That means you, Neck Beard people.  There will be some whining about this, but that’s really unbelievable since we have layer after layer of diamond-sharp blades in those Mach 50 razors.  The ancient Romans were all clean shaven and half of them were shaving with a dull, rusted spear.  And the other half didn’t have any aloe strip on their razor.

Yes, I admit it, shaving is a drag.  Tell me about it!  But you have to do it.  It’s rule.  And as a consolation, you can be cool doing it.  I recommend a safety razor and shaving soap.  It’s cheap, it’s a really nice shave, and the soap and brush are a lot better for your skin than Napalm-gel stuff sold under the “Edge” brand.  Let’s say it’s a way to kick it old-school without going back to the Neolithic era.

3.  Yes, sometimes a beard is the right choice.  But choose wisely, friends.  Here is a list of 20 off-beat but acceptable beards.  The only one I don’t approve of is–surprise!–one wore by a pro athlete, some baseball clown named Rollie Fingers.  There’s also a shot of a respectable lamb-chop beard on Walt Frazier.

Little known fact of American history: Abraham Lincoln may have grown a beard because a little girl told him to.  Seriously.  11-yeare old Grace Bedell wrote Lincoln in a letter:

“Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.”

What a nice kid.  She supported Lincoln, but was giving him some advice.  Admit it, he was ugly–in a Greatest-President-Ever sort of way.  So it was a good idea to add a beard to that gaunt, scary face of his.  Check it out:

Abe Lincoln.  Frightening-looking attorney at law.

That’s much better.  Way to show us how it’s done, Abe.