The Lost Brack-It: Best NBA Player with Goggles

Quarter Finals
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs James Worthy

George Mikan vs Bo Outlaw

Kurt Rambis vs Amar’e Stoudemire

Horace Grant vs Moses Malone


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs James Worthy

Kareem and Worthy both rocked the bug eye, racquetball goggles while they played for the Lakers and won three NBA Championships together. The goggles speak to the era they were worn in with a funky, ‘80s vibe. You can imagine Worthy and Kareem switching out the lenses to a rose or blue shade and heading to a club. The specs have large clear round lenses that give the eyes a magnified look that surely helped to intimidate defenders. The white nose pieces are thick and probably designed to keep the bad boy Pistons from breaking their glasses. Although both look stylish and have multiple championship credentials, it is pretty easy to pick a winner. Worthy is a great player and a Hall of Famer, but Abdul-Jabbar was the biggest star in Hollywood for the Showtime Lakers. The big fella takes the round.

George Mikan vs Bo Outlaw

George Mikan can be credited with being a part of many historical changes in professional basketball. Because of him, basketball has goal tending, 12 ft key, shot clock, the center position, the Mikan Drill, the Timberwolves, the ABA and multi-colored ball, the three-point line and for the most part the success and popularity of the League. His nickname is Mr. Basketball, and he won several NBL, BAA and NBA Championships. Most importantly, he was one of the first superstars to wear glasses while he played. Towering over his smaller defenders at 6-10, Mikan didn’t get too many four-eyes cracks, but he was sporting some coke bottle lenses.
Bo Outlaw was a defensive specialist and a fan favorite wherever he played. His all out hustle and intensity led him to an impressive career even if he was never considered as skilled as some of the other players around the League. Outlaw was definitely one of the most stylish though, rocking Oakley style sunglasses with clear lenses and a single earpiece/frame bar with a detached nose piece that was the trendiest frames of the time. Outlaw’s glasses are the Jetsons compared to Mikan’s Flintstones. Although Outlaw is a good sport, he got a bad draw and can’t compete with a legend of basketball eye wear. Mr. Basketball is Mr. Spectacles.

Kurt Rambis vs Amar’e Stoudemire

An explosive big man can be the difference between a lottery team and a playoff team. An explosive big man with rec specs is the difference between a good player and a legend. Amar’e Stoudemire finds himself in the minority of today’s players, who have more popularly moved to contacts for vision correction. He was forced to wear his protective goggles this past season due to a detached retina injury that he suffered the year before. Stoudemire is currently wearing similar goggles to Bo Outlaw and many beach volleyball players. His is still new to the goggle club and hopefully he switches his style up with some of the options that David Spade picked out in his All-Star campaign YouTube video.
Kurt Rambis is another member of the Showtime Lakers who wore goggles while he played. His rec specs have a nerd sheik look that any hipster would be proud to wear. They are also functional as seen by Kevin McHale’s infamous take down of Rambis during game four of the ’84 Finals. Rambis never lost his glasses in one of the most punishing hits in finals history. Stoudemire’s goggles wouldn’t have survived that kind of punishment, and they don’t survive to the next round.

Horace Grant vs Moses Malone

When you are in the league for 21 years and win three League MVP awards, it is easy to make a statement – a fashion statement. Moses Malone dominated the ABA and NBA as a rebounding and scoring machine right out of high school. His eyewear of choice was similar to the racquetball/bug eye goggles that Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy wore. His corrected vision allowed him to manage 27,409 points and 16,212 rebounds in his career. He changed goggles later in his career with the Hawks to stay with the times and wore red specs to match the team colors. The change in technology for the sport goggles hasn’t changed much, but the addition of the color changing rec specs made Horace Grant one of the most recognizable players in the ‘90s. The pre-HDTV era made it much more difficult to figure out what was going on in a game (try watching an old game on an old TV), but the rec specs made it easy to spot Grant jumping threw the lane for a rebound. His sense for fashion came out in the color of his rec specs that he matched with his jersey like putting matching colored rims on a Cadillac. Although Grant may not have the statistics on Malone, he does have more rings (4), and he embraced the goggles more than Malone making them a part of his persona. Grant takes down the three time MVP in this competition.


Semi-Finals

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs George Mikan
Horace Grant vs Kurt Rambis


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs George Mikan

The camera flashes from the paparazzi must be extra bright in Hollywood cause the two greatest centers in Lakers’ history had terrible vision. Sorry Shaq, but if you wanted to be considered the greatest center in Lakers’ history, you should have worn some protective eye wear. It is kind of a tradition, and just think of all the missed opportunities for clever nicknames, Shaq Specs, bifoShaqcals, Stunna Shaqs. Even Jack Nicholas wears shades and he just sits on the sidelines. Any big man who dominates the paint with a pair of hater blockers on their face just adds to the intimidation of the opponent. Now discussing whether Abdul-Jabbar or Mikan was more important to the Lakers or the game of basketball is like discussing the importance of Blublockers over Wayfarers; it is about personal preference. Nonetheless a decision must be made and lets face it, George Mikan looks like a mathlete not an athlete. Also, Abdul-Jabbar gets bonus points for wearing ridiculous snow goggles early in his career, ridiculous.

Horace Grant vs Kurt Rambis

You have to wonder what kind of heated arguments went down in the Lakers locker room about the trends in recreational eyewear. Why didn’t Rambis follow his spectacle wearing Showtime Lakers lead and go with the clear-framed goggles? According to Chick Hearn, legendary broadcaster for the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s because Kurt Rambis is just an alter ego for his real job as Superman. I’m not trying to TMZ on Rambis’ off-court activities, but if I saw him rush into a phone booth I’d stick around to see if he flew out.
With Grant you never knew what color he would choose to sport when he came on the court to beat up on opposing big men. Zaza Pachulia, HOOP’s style editor, would have to give him a thumb up for coordinating his goggles with his jersey, especially the blue Magic jerseys, so fresh. Any fan of the NBA Jam videogame franchise remembers that although Glen Rice looked an awful lot like Kevin Johnson and every other player, Horace Grant could be easily recognized with his in-game rec specs. Rambis was a pioneer for the visually impaired power forward, but Grant took the time and had passion for the look of his sports goggles and overtakes Rambis to get into the finals.

Finals

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs Horace Grant

The tradition of winning and eye protection go hand in hand, and I’m glad HOOP took the ad space to honor these heroes of optometry. Just imagine if Medusa had some mirrored lenses, a lot of lives would have been saved. Cyclops’ laser vision wasn’t nearly as useful whenever someone knocked off his glasses, and it sure is difficult to hit a skyhook when you can’t see the basket. Both Abdul-Jabbar and Grant have plenty of other accessories other than their glasses, and by that I mean championship rings. They are the first too players that come up in any conversation about rec specs. Although you can make a case for either player, Grant takes it as the best player to wear rec specs. He is remembered more for his choice of eyewear than he is for his game, and as P. Diddy (formerly known as Puff Daddy) says in his song All About the Benjamins, he is “trying to get my hands on some grants like Horace.”