Outfitted: Nick Young
They don’t call him ‘Swaggy P’ for nothin’.
Nick Young was born into basketball. After getting dunked on by his older brothers, the Los Angeles native found himself honing his skills and taking his basketball talents straight to the NBA. “We all had good high school careers, but I was the first to go pro,” Young told Maxim. “Everyone had their own teams too. I was probably the only odd one out as a Seattle Supersonics fan, but my Dad loved the Lakers. That was big for me.”
Throughout the course of his career, Nick has had the opportunity to play with the greats, like Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Kobe Bryant. Now, 8 years later after being picked up by the Wizards in 2007, the star athlete has acquired plenty of tricks to help carry his hometown team to victory. “I’ve learned how to carry the right attitude and confidence,” he said. “Some players just have this aura around ’em and I thought, ‘Man, that’s dope.’ Just playing with someone like Kobe, you want to be like that. There’s nobody in the world who’s better.”
With encouragement from his friends, family, and goddess girlfriend, Iggy Azalea, The LA Lakers’ number 0 is set to make the 2015-2016 season his best yet. Just watch.
Nick filled Maxim in on turning into James Bond, his favorite hangout spot, and that dream championship interview.
I just like to be fresh! When keeping up appearances, it depends on the day, what I feel like, what I feel like doing, and what I feel like putting on, you know? Do I wanna stunt on ‘em real bad, or do I wanna take it easy? So it all really depends on how I’m feeling.
My style started to change probably around my junior year, when I started wearing more fitted things and skinnier jeans. Going back to my neighborhood, they were talking trash, like ‘what is this?’, you know, clowning me all day. And then they started wearing the same things like a couple years later.
Every guy’s got to own a fresh pair of ripped jeans. They go with anything. You could dress it up, dress it down.
On that first date with a girl, it depends on what you should wear. I don’t want you to be trying too hard and look like you’re trying so hard. I think you could throw on a collared shirt and have your chest hair showing a little bit. [laughs] And no slacks. No slacks on the first date. You want them to see you as a superstar, so you can surprise ’em when you go to a banquet together, that’s when you throw your suit on and impress her. She’ll be shocked like, ‘Damn, I didn’t know you could turn into James Bond like that.’
With some downtime, I like to go to Dave and Buster’s, that’s my spot. Even though they put a lot of pressure on players like myself, you got to hit up the basketball court. I’m always down to play some games, hang with the fellas, eat, and chill. And I like to just hang out at the house with my lady.
I actually want to work with a couple people in the fashion world, we’ll see what happens. I like John Elliott, he’s pretty dope. I’ve been pretty into a lot of street-wear right now. When talking with Iggy, she tells me to pretty much do it all on my own. I’m trying to help her out, actually. Give her a couple fashion tips, you know? She’s got to be a little more daring out there.
One day, I just hope to give a championship interview. That interview after you win, it’s gotta be classic. I want to see myself giving a priceless interview, something that’s going to go down in history.
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