The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

What’s wrong with this picture?

On the surface? Absolutely nothing. That’s your boy Kevin Jones wearing Cleveland Cavaliers practice attire. Wine, gold, white and navy. It’s all there. 

But now look at this picture.

Nothing something? Something that isn’t in the above picture? Headband, right? Yes. But also no. I’m looking for something else.

I’ll give you a moment …

Stuck? Here’s a hint …

Undershirts! KJ wore them all the time in college and can’t wear them in the NBA.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he told me last week. “I was really disappointed about that. That’s kind of like my siganture, my trademark, with the headband and the undershirt.

“I can still wear the headband and hopefully I’ll be able to find something comfortable that’s like an undershirt.”

That’s a possibility. Compression shirts and the like can be work under the jersey, but they can’t be visible.

“The body armor stuff and the skin tight stuff you can wear and I definitely think I need to do something like that,” Jones said. “I don’t know if I can wear nothing and it sucks I can’t wear the undershirt anymore, but I’m sure I can find something.”

Jones remembers taking the undershirts seriously as far back as when he began to take basketball seriously as little KJ. It started as a necessity before evolving into a recognizeable accessory.

“At first it was because of the whoke sweating thing,” he said. “If you’ve ever watched me play, I sweat a whole lot — it’s crazy. So at first it was because of that.

“Then it kind of became a trademark and how people figured out who I was and how people pointed me out during a game. It stuck.”

Jones said the T-shirt was a point of reference in high school and AAU basbetball. He figured fans, opponents, college coaches, whoever, could watch a game and either single out Jones during the game or reference him afterward by mentioning “the one in the undershirt.”

By the time he got to college, the undershirts that hugged his torso were wrapped around his brain, too.

“It’s definitely going to be more of a mental adjustment for me than anything else,” he said. “When you’re used to playing a certain way, you feel comfortable and you play a certain way.

“When you get out of that comfort zone, it’s going to take kind of an adjustment. You’ve got to play through it now. You’re a professional. You can’t let not wearing an undershirt get to you.”

Good news for KJ, though. The upper-body commando isn’t unprecedented.

That’s one shot from each game of the 2009 76 Classic, in Anaheim, Calif. WVU beat Long Beach State, Texas A&M and Portlant to win the title. KJ did OK, too. He shot 15-for-23 and averaged 12.7 points and 6.7 rebounds as that Final Four-bound team took shape and found its swagger.

The 2009-10 season was KJ’s best, of course, and how did it begin? With a sleeveless white look in the season-opener against Loyola.

To new beginnings!