On January 21, 2001, Allen Iverson, one of the great accessorizers in the great history of N.B.A. accessorizing, took the court with what appeared to be a length of white pantyhose stretched over his right arm. Iverson’s shooting elbow had developed bursitis: it had been swelling up for some time, and, devising a temporary solution to an injury that would ultimately require surgery, Lenny Currier, then the trainer of the Philadelphia 76ers, cut a swath of a tube bandage called compression stockinette and suggested that Iverson try to play with his elbow mummified in the stuff. Iverson agreed. He scored fifty-one points that night, averaged more than thirty-five points per game for the rest of the season, and dragged the 76ers to the N.B.A. finals. He wore a sleeve for the rest of his career.
Medical necessity quickly turned into fashion accessory. “We used the stockinette to help Allen get through sore days,” Currier told me. “But as you know with Allen, once the other players started seeing him wearing it, they all followed his lead.” A few months after Iverson débuted the repurposed compression stockinette, a nascent sportswear company called Under Armour contacted Currier and asked if Iverson might try on a nylon sleeve they had made especially for him. “Their version was longer and came in red, blue, black, and white, so that it could match whatever uniform we were wearing that night,” Currier said. “They had some elderly lady stitching them together by hand. Allen ended up giving her an autographed jersey because he loved the product so much.”
Scoop Jackson, a basketball writer who covered Iverson for Slam magazine and ESPN, recalls that Iverson had tried out a variety of treatments for his bursitis but ultimately settled on the compression stockinette out of necessity. “Allen was always a great scorer,” Jackson explained. “But he wasn’t a great shooter. There wasn’t room for error in his shot, so they needed something that was light enough that it wouldn’t affect his motion at all.”
In tonight’s second-round playoff game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Miami Heat, five of the game’s ten starters will most likely wear a sleeve. (N.B.A. fashion, especially during the playoffs, is fickle and subject to superstition, or, in the case of LeBron James tossing off his headband during Game Six of last year’s N.B.A. finals, superhero transformation.) Not one of these players has missed any time this year with elbow problems. (When asked about the sleeve’s rise in popularity in the league, Jackson asked, “What, does everyone have bursitis now?”) Thirteen years after Currier cut a length of compression stockinette for his aching superstar, Iverson’s sleeve, now known as the “shooter sleeve,” has become ubiquitous. Currier, who now works as a trainer for Villanova’s lacrosse team, claims no stake in all this. “I was just trying to help an injured player,” he mused. “But I guess I should have thought of patenting it.”
Photograph by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty.
