Look, I’m not asking for much. I don’t want your mortgage. I don’t want your firstborn child. I just want you — yes, you, wealthy NBA playoff game attendee — throw on the free T-shirt that’s literally sitting there begging for attention on your seat.

Once upon a beautiful time, every NBA playoff game looked like a sea of colour-coded chaos. Red outs, white outs, yellow outs — it was like every arena became a massive, sweaty, screaming crayon box. The fans looked united. The atmosphere was insane. It was a visual spectacle that made regular season games feel like ancient history.

Now it looks like a LinkedIn conference where half the people are wearing golf polos and the other half forgot there even was a dress code.

You know who still gets it? The real ones. The OKC Thunder? Those fans will fight you for a free shirt. The Indiana Pacers? They’ll rip it out of a kid’s hands if they have to. These are small market teams where the crowd lives for playoff games.

Fans react to Malik Beasley of the Detroit Pistons after a three-point shot against the New York Knicks in Game Four of the Eastern Conference First Round NBA Playoffs. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

They come ready, ready to scream their lungs out and look like a human colour smoothie on national TV. There’s just something special about watching a game where the whole crowd wears matching shirts. Something you never experience in other sports.

Meanwhile, over in places like Boston, New York and Los Angeles?

Playoff shirts sit on chairs like abandoned puppies.

People show up late wearing Balenciaga and designer jeans, refusing to participate in the sacred, holy ritual of the matching shirt energy. The shirts stay sad and crumpled while some guy in a $500 hoodie posts selfies about how “crazy” the playoff atmosphere is – while sitting down in the first quarter and politely clapping like he’s at a wine tasting festival.

You’re killing the vibe, man. You’re absolutely throttling the vibe with your stubborn refusal to put on the communal, blessed cotton armour of fandom. I don’t care if the shirt’s two sizes too big. I don’t care if it wrinkles your vintage Fear of God jacket.

Put it on.

It’s not just a shirt. It’s a promise. A promise that tonight, you are one with the 20,000 strangers around you. That for a few hours, you are all irrationally angry about the same missed foul call. That you will scream like a lunatic every time your team hits a three, and you will boo like your life depends on it when the visiting side touches the ball.

Without the shirts, the arena loses a little of its soul. Instead of a unified wall of energy, it looks like a vague, distracted gathering of people who stumbled into a basketball game after brunch. You think it’s a coincidence that the lower-market teams sometimes have better playoff home records? No. It’s because those fans are feral. They are hungry. And they are not too proud to wear a dang free shirt and look like an army.

The Solution?
Teams should bring back mandatory shirt wearing.
Scan your ticket? Boom, you get handed a shirt.
Security at the doors? “Sorry sir, if you don’t put on the team tee, you’re not getting past the velvet rope.”
Don’t want to wear it? That’s fine. There’s a lovely winery nearby. Enjoy watching the game from the bar like the fashion-first nonbeliever you are.

We need the shirts. We deserve the shirts. The playoffs deserve better than a crowd that looks like they’re waiting for their Uber at Coachella.

Bring them back.
Bring back the shirts.
And if you’re sitting courtside in a $2,000 outfit, crying about “aesthetic,” just remember – no amount of Gucci will make up for your team losing Game 7 because the atmosphere was as dead as a 9am dentist appointment.

Suit up, or ship out.