Any millennial who was alive in the late aughts and early 2010s can tell you that it wasn’t a great time for fashion. You had the twee ModCloth girls inspired by celebrities like Zooey Deschanel duking it out with the guys in white skinny jeans and Kanye West-inspired shutter shades for whose subculture could age worse faster, while others existed in the intersection of the two, sporting skinny jeans and thick-rimmed black glasses with vests. Basically, they looked like Ellen DeGeneres.


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It’s not a style that you would typically associate with the NBA, but as Adam Kester points out in a recent video, it bizarrely had the basketball world in a chokehold from roughly 2009 to 2013, when everyone woke up and realized that there was no need to be wearing business casual to the club.


Kester calls it a “hipster/preppy/nerd look,” but, functionally, players were just walking around looking like they raided Ellen’s wardrobe. He then goes on to describe a few key players’ fits during this time, starting with Russell Westbrook, who “always had a tight dress shirt with some sort of pattern on it, a tie, some tight khakis, maybe some brightly colored pants.” Meanwhile, Kevin Durant was constantly walking around with a backpack strapped incredibly tightly to his chest, looking like a stereotypical nerd from an ‘80s teen movie, just without the pocket protector and calculator.


Kester goes on to outline a few staples of everyone’s wardrobes during this era: cardigans, tight pants (usually khakis) and ties and bow ties. In addition, pants in unusual colors were common, as were printed shirts and flannels. Kester includes a crazy photo of Steve Nash in a salmon-colored sweater and patterned bow tie, paired with a white shirt and khakis — and therefore, managing to tick every box with a single outfit.


Last but not least were the thick-framed glasses, many of which didn’t have lenses; you didn’t need to have a prescription to rock them, and many people didn’t, under the misapprehension that they looked cool.


Commenters were happy to try and find the source of the trend, as well as coin a name for it. Many agreed that “hipster” works just fine, although others suggested “swag business casual.” Which begs the question: Where exactly is the swag?


Whatever you call it, let’s just hope nobody tries to revive it the way they’re reviving Y2K fashion right now. Let it stay dead and buried.