Tacky facial hair in the NBA [updated–the Charlton Heston edition]

UPDATE: [More complaining about beards here.]

There are better things to talk about in the middle of the playoffs, but something must be said about the really crummy standards of facial hair grooming in the NBA today. It’s really not enough that most tattoos on NBA players are either painfully permanent cliches (“no guts no glory”; “only the strong survive”) or are blurry dark forms that resemble hideous birthmarks more than that skull/ basketball intertwined with a Blazers emblem the guy was going for. The only undisputably cool tat—that on Rasheed Wallace’s right upper arm—is vastly outnumbered by example after example of some of the ugliest and most unsightly artwork that millionaries ever paid big bucks for.

So does the facial hair have to suck that bad as well? Guys, you’re in a sport where you get a TV close-up every time you draw a shooting foul! You don’t want the hobo look. But the NBA today has the worst facial hair grooming habits I’ve seen. Pau Gasol is the only Spaniard I’ve ever seen who looks like a caveman.

Dwayne Wade, ambassador of the NBA and cell-phone peddler, drew a beard on his face with a Sharpie. “Sexayy.” The problem here is of course not a lack of trimming, but hyper-trimming. For this reason the “Sharpie Beard” could also be called the “Wire Beard”. Charles should have refused to let him into his “Five” when he decided not to stop at this pencil-thin “goatee”. Now his look resembles me when I dyed my hair, and inky dye ran down over my ear and along my jawline to my chin. Does “Being Dwayne Wade” involve taking style tips from Scot Pollard?

Does Yao have some problem shaving? His beard is patchy (to put it a positive spin on it), but it seems he may not even own a razor. Can’t Yao’s people come to some kind of agreement with Gillette here? One billboard per year in exchange for a lifetime supply of Mach3s and a free shave from a barber before every game. China has 400 million human beings who might be interested in a Gillette product, and I imagine that all of them are more familiar with shaving than Yao is. Let’s make it happen.

I was about to make fun of Andres Nocioni’s beard next, but then I realized that it looks exactly like mine. So Nocioni’s cool. And so is Baron Davis’s awesome beard.

UPDATE I: If you’re wondering why there are as many bad beards in the NBA as there are, the answer is the same as everything else: it’s the fault of the fans and the teams for encouraging or condoning this bad behavior. Do a Google search for “gasol beard” (here, I did it for you), you’ll see that everyone on the internet thinks Gasol’s beard is cool. These people must all be beardless 13 year olds, for whom any beard at all is really cool, or they want to make facial hair into a counter-cultural statement again. The Grizzles even made up a paper beard mask for people to wear at games. You can get the pdf and print your own out here.

Michael Deuser even called Gasol’s scraggly fuzz the year’s “Best Fashion Statement” in 2005-06. Said Deuser: “The bearded look adds a touch of ruggedness to a guy whose finesse-based game had earned him the nickname ‘Picasso.'” Really? To me, Gasol’s look doesn’t say “rugged”, it says “Donner Party”.

UPDATE II: I couldn’t find a picture of the original Pollard “Line Beard”, which D-Wade has transformed into the “Sharpie Beard” or the “Wire Beard”. But here’s a more recent Pollard look:

You’re a joke, Scot Pollard.  Odd thing is, the guy actually knows how to grow a decent looking beard, as you can see here:

But we also see here that you can’t get even a single pic of a good NBA beard, without catching a glimpse of another bad NBA beard. I rest my case!

UPDATE III:  As you can see here, it is true that like Gasol’s beard, Charlton Heston’s Moses beard makes his face twice as large. But that’s where the similarities end. Look at that thick, wavy, well-conditioned beard! As filmmakers of the 1950s knew very well, the Old Testament prophets may have worn beards, but they were no hippies! Gasol’s beard makes Jerry Garcia’s face look well-kept.  Moses spent 40 years in the desert and he has better grooming than modern-day people, at least in a Cecil B. DeMille film.

UPDATE IV: In honor of Charlton Heston, I should give another example of a really great beard.  It’s even an example from the NBA.  Baron Davis:

If you are going to have a beard, do it right.  If you can’t grow a beard, don’t do it.  No one will blame you for being clean shaven.  There are plenty of fine-looking clean-shaven males.  Don’t follow the example of Pau Gasol or Scot Pollard, however.  Look to Baron Davis and Charlton Heston.

UPDATE V: The NBA ‘stache.  I’m not going to mention the hackneyed subject of Adam Morrison’s “mustache”.  Among other reasons, he’ll be out of the league soon and this blog can’t live in the soon-to-be-past.  But I should note that there’s really nothing so horrible about having just a mustache.  Now it’s out of vogue, but it used to be normal, and as Drew Gooden or Deshawn Stevenson will tell you, less is more when it comes to athletics and being hairy.  Someone mentioned Kurt Rambis’ beard from the 1980s.  Well, here it is:

So what’s wrong with that?  I don’t see a Nietszchean mop stache, nor do I see excessive waxing or trimming.  Sure, there’s a modest mullet to match.  But that’s what they did in the 1980s. Don’t hate it. That would be like getting worked up because George Washington wore a wig.  Instead of hating 1980s mainstream fashion, cast some of those disapproving glares over at whatever Drew Gooden is dreaming up.