Fast forward to the 2024–2025 NBA season, which officially began on Tuesday, and Kyle 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.”
Source: Vogue
Source: Vogue
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Kyle Kuzma: The tunnel used to be a way to really express yourself, but now everything is so monetized and commercialized. People have stylists; people are buying clothes to wear once, or brands or sending clothes. Where’s the individuality in that? Or the creativeness? Everything’s out of whack. I feel like even the people that follow NBA fashion are like, “this is too much.” -via Vogue / October 26, 2024
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.” -via Vogue / October 26, 2024
Wizards forward and style crossover star Kyle Kuzma’s Puma deal has expired, with “Kuz” already spotted playing in recent Kobe models. He’s even customized some pairs to conceal the Swoosh logo. Before landing his multi-million dollar deal with Puma in 2019 while on the Lakers, Kuzma was often rotating through one of the league’s best Kobe collections of rare pairs and PEs. -via boardroom.tv / October 10, 2024