By Erin Cunningham

But since when did basketball stars care about fashion? And vice versa? How did the NBA playoffs become akin to Fashion Week when only a few years earlier it would have been unheard of for the kings of basketball to be involved in the style industry? Before April 2008, no African American male—let alone a sports player—had ever appeared on the cover of Vogue.

Soon after, players like the New York Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire began popping up on the pages of the magazine and accompanying Wintour to New York Fashion Week. Since then, NBA players across the country have embraced—and been embraced by—the style savvy. And so a strange, beautiful relationship was born.

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