Kelly Oubre Jr. is a man of many talents. Luckily for the Phoenix Suns, one of those is basketball, but he is a trendsetter off the court as well. However, both his clothing line and training camp participation have hit a few delays.
Kelly Oubre Jr. made waves when he resigned with the Phoenix Suns this offseason.
Correction: he made tsunamis.
After undergoing season-ending thumb surgery on his shooting hand, Oubre has had a busy summer. He has been rehabbing, standing up a new clothing line, and working out while standing on a funny-looking gelatin ball.
One wonders how he finds time to post so many fashion model Instagram stories.
Let’s recap this busy man’s many happenings:
He hasn’t yet practiced at training camp
Everyone, including Oubre himself, expected him to be ready to go for the start of training camp. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
He sat out the first day of camp with what the team called, “hand discomfort.” Head coach Monty Williams claimed he wasn’t sure which hand was bothering him, which seems like a supremely unnecessary obfuscation.
The guy just had surgery on his left thumb. Everyone knows that.
Unless he overworked his right hand while his left hand was out of commission post surgery, it is a safe assumption the thumb on his shooting hand isn’t fully healed.
Or so one would think.
It turns out Oubre actually has a brace on his right hand. No word yet on how this happened.
Let the Tsunami Papi hand watch begin.
Valley Boyz merch is coming soon
Kelly Oubre Jr. is the face of the new team culture, Valley Boys. Or, for Twitter purposes, #ValleyBoyz.
He is capitalizing on the growing trend with the creation of his own Valley Boyz merch.
For those not marketing-lingo inclined, “merch” is short for merchandise which encompasses clothes, accessories, and coffee cups alike.
Considering Oubre has more style in his painted fingernails than all of us do in our whole bodies, expect this merch to be fashionable attire, not souvenir key chains and pint glasses.
Oubre spoke at media day about this venture and when you will be able to cop it. He is working on setting up a pop-up store at an undisclosed location in the Phoenix area, and hopes to have it up before the season starts.
He teased it more in Media Day interview by saying:
"“[There’s] a lot of nice, dope stuff coming.”"
After Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas a few weeks ago, Oubre tweeted some of the Valley Boyz proceeds will go toward the UNICEF relief fund, but Oubre has been #Shhh about any more details since then.
He is trying to make #Shhh a thing
While Valley Boyz is resonating with the Phoenix Suns fan base, Oubre’s next trend attempt is slow to get off the ground.
After every tweet, Oubre appends the hashtag #Shhh. It has caused some confusion in the Twitterverse because he includes it even after important news that most people would want to spread.
It doesn’t stop with just a hashtag. Kelly put his hand over his mouth as a visual representation of the movement during a Media Day interview. He described it as:
"“Yeah, yeah. Just covering the mouth. Shhh. Kinda…keepin’ it quiet. I hope [everyone in Phoenix will be doing it soon].”"
Maybe the expectation is for fans to cover their mouths after he scores. Or maybe he wants the entire crowd to make the shhhh noise.
That seems counter-intuitive to cheering, but arenas make the boooo noise to praise the guy on their team whose last name rhymes with the jeer, so there’s precedent for it, I guess.
The best trends happen organically, so don’t look for any instruction guides on this one. Everyone will have to just sit back and see where it goes. Or doesn’t go.
Setting aside his fashion and his trend setting ability, Phoenix Suns fans are ready for him to pick up where he left off last year on the court.
Hopefully his hand discomfort will not linger like a Valley Boyz pop-up store and if it does, the Suns won’t be #Shhh about it.