Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Olivier Rogers, Getty Images
About four hours before tip-off of game three of the NBA Finals, Knicks guard Tyler Kolek was getting dressed in a midtown hotel a stone’s throw from Madison Square Garden. Kolek is a sturdy 25-year-old backup who tends to get playing time when the Knicks are either up by a lot or down by even more. After two seasons with the team, he’s already a fan favorite off the bench, most notably for saving “Knicksmas” when he led a major comeback in a Christmas Day game against the Cleveland Cavaliers last year.
Kolek is also an unlikely contender for the most stylish man in the NBA. He has a floppy finance-guy haircut and is perhaps best known by the casual fan for entering barbecue chicken into the basketball-slang lexicon. And yet the former Marquette star has outdressed just about everyone else in the NBA during his squad’s playoffs run. On Monday afternoon, he was laying out his fit for the night: a vintage 1980s Issey Miyake quilted bomber jacket, faded Prada jeans, and leather Chanel hiking boots (also vintage, size 13).
“You could look at a picture of the outfit and say, ‘Oh, is that the 1990s, the 2010s, or the 2020s?’ So that’s kind of the vibe,” he says.
Kolek’s looks stand out even in a series that stars fashion plates such as Jordan Clarkson and Victor Wembanyama and where Timothée Chalamet and Spike Lee wear their most flamboyant orange and blue courtside. His logo-less, downtown-coded style might not immediately register in a league full of top Chrome Hearts clients, but it has attracted fashion obsessives who can spot his Margaux bag from a mile away. (He was recently profiled by the popular man-on-the-street style fiend Maurice Kamara of the People Gallery, who went nuts when Kolek mentioned he was wearing Dries Van Noten.)
After his Miu Miu polos attracted second glances all season, Kolek arrived at game one of the Finals in San Antonio in a full workwear set by Junya Watanabe. For game two, he wore a slouchy Bally leather blouson from the ’80s paired with vintage pleated Comme des Garçons trousers and white loafers from The Row.
Basketball players have embraced the fashion world ever since the NBA relaxed its pregame business-casual wardrobe in 2020, but it’s a relatively new development for Kolek. Where last year he tended to wear standard-issue Kith and Aimé Leon Dore, now he looks like an off-duty Patrick Bateman with a house account at Lara Koleji, the Lower East Side vintage designer boutique beloved by fashion insiders and Dimes Square scenesters.
Kolek wearing a vintage Issey Miyake jacket, Prada jeans, and Chanel boots to game three.
Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
And he really does shop there. “Right before the Finals, we went to Lara Koleji’s showroom and picked out a bunch of runway pieces from back in the day,” says Olivier Rogers, a Brooklyn-based designer and stylist who has been working with Kolek to rebuild his wardrobe. “I was like, ‘This is your moment.’ The NBA Finals is like the NBA players’ Met Gala.”
Rogers and Kolek connected over their shared Rhode Island roots; Rogers, who was born in St. Martin, grew up mostly in Providence, and Kolek is from nearby Cumberland. “When Tyler got picked up by the Knicks last year, I hit him up, like, ‘We got to lock in,’” says Rogers, who saw in Kolek a prime opportunity to push the boundaries of tunnel style.
Kolek in a Prada beanie, vintage jacket, Comme des Garçons cardigan, The Row jeans, and Prada shoes.
Photo: Olivier Rogers
There’s a reason most NBA players don’t wear designer vintage, despite the fact that the league has the highest-per-capita fashion IQ in professional sports: Giorgio Armani wasn’t cutting leather jackets for giants in the ’80s. But Kolek is an approachable six-two. “Tyler doesn’t look like a basketball player when you see him walking down the street, so it was easy to change him,” Rogers says of his client’s stature. “He could be walking the runway as a model. One of his dreams is to walk for Ralph Lauren.”
Kolek says his teammates have noticed his glow-up. “Obviously, we got a very fashionable team. Jeremy Sochan, Landry Shamet, Jordan Clarkson. Those guys all like to dress. I was looking at Landry beforehand, because he wears button-ups; he dresses kind of casual and classy. Our lockers are right next to each other at the Garden, and he always looks over. He’s like, ‘What do you got today, man?’”
After dropping game three at home on Monday, the Knicks have work to do. Kolek and Rogers have planned out seven outfits in case the series goes the distance. They showed me some of the looks, which are heavy on vintage Armani, Prada, and Issey Miyake. Kolek declined to share which one he would wear to the trophy matchup, but he feels ready. “Obviously, if it’s a closeout game, you got to come with something that will close them out,” he says.
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