NEW YORK--In a further effort to establish uniformity in players’ on-court appearance, NBA Commissioner David Stern instituted a new rule today forcing all players to wear the same size shoes. The rule goes into effect immediately, and players have one week to bring themselves into compliance.

“This is something I wanted to do to maintain some uniformity in regards to the way the players dress,” said Stern. “After all, they are uniforms. They’re supposed to be uniform aren’t they? We can’t have some guys running around with wristbands and some without, and some guys wearing tights and some not, and some guys wearing size 16 shoes while other wearing size 11’s. That’s not acceptable. Everyone must conform. For example, have you ever checked out the guys in the league office? Can you tell any of us apart? Exactly.”

Stern said the lack of rules regarding footwear has resulted in a “dizzying array” of huge shoes, medium sized ones, and little tiny ones. Now, with the new rule, all players will be forced to wear size 13.

“Judging from the size of the footwear on our players, you would never know that all these guys play in the same league,” he said. “It’s crazy. Some guys look like big foot, while other guys look like little kids. We’ve got to get everybody on the same page here. And I don’t want to hear anybody complaining about their shoe being the wrong size and hurting their feet. Please. Tell your sneaker company butt-buddies to design something that won’t hurt your feet. Otherwise you’ll be playing in the NBDL, which, contrary to what I say every 5 minutes, is not even close to being a legitimate league.”

The past two NBA seasons have seen a plethora of rule changes designed to distance the league from its hip-hop, thug-like image. Last season Stern instituted an off court dress code that forced players to abandon retro-jerseys in favor of suits, and earlier this week he instituted new regulations regarding wrist bands, head bands, and tights.

The new “shoe rule” has resulted in the biggest protest of them all.

“What? We have to wear the same size shoes? That doesn’t even make sense,” said Minnesota’s Kevin Garnett. “My feet are huge. I need bigger shoes than most other players. I can’t be running around in size 13’s for the rest of my career. I won’t even make it through this season. Man, this is like communism, except with more money and more cheerleaders and less standing in line for toilet paper.”

Many players have already said they would refuse to abide by the new rule and are willing to pay the fines to keep their current shoe sizes.

“I’m not wearing size 13 shoes. No chance,” said the 76ers Allen Iverson. “I’m an 11 and a half and I’ll be stumbling all over the place with those things. They can fine me whatever they want. I just wish they would stop judging people by the stupid things like the size shoes they where. The only thing that matters is what’s on the inside. Okay so some of us aren’t exactly prizes on the inside, either. Maybe they should just judge us on dribbling ability.”

Despite complaints from players, Stern may not be done tweaking the uniform policy. He confessed yesterday to being “befuddled” by the fact that each team must wear different color jerseys.

“There is a serious lack of uniformity when it comes to team colors,” Stern said. “You’ve got the Lakers wearing yellow and blue, the Celtics wearing green and white, the Spurs wearing black and gray and so on. It’s complete chaos. Someday down the road we might seriously consider everybody switching to standard black and white uniforms. We’ll be able to tell them apart by the team names on the front. It might seem silly, but think of it this way: I am a mentally unstable control freak and I have to have everything just right in order to keep my obsessive compulsive disorder in check. See, it doesn’t seem so silly now does it?”

Stern did dismiss rumors that he was considering establishing uniformity rules to regulate the types of marijuana that players smoke.

  Copyright 2006, The Brushback - This article is satire and is not intended as actual news. Do not reprint without permission.