Style Icon Walt "Clyde" Frazier

Clyde was the Ultimate in Seventies Cool

Walt “Clyde” Frazier at his penthouse apartment c. 1973

During the height of the pandemic, there was truly only one mode of entertainment I could fully vibe with. We’d sit on our grey couch with a sweaty can of beer and chip-encrusted fingers and watch the pulpy regional New York City telecast of Knicks basketball games, flush with happiness.

If you’re not into sports at all, don’t worry, because this edition of the newsletter is not about really about basketball. It’s about one of the hippest people alive. It’s about current Knicks broadcaster, lifestyle maven, and one of my favorite influencers of all-time, Walt “Clyde” Frazier. Even at 76-years-old, and as a broadcast commentator for MSG Networks, he is a man that embodies the boogie, and we’re going to visit his fabulous 1970s past.

Frazier is one of the greatest professional athletes of all time, but outside of the game of basketball he's got a swagger and radiant energy akin to the pulsating vibes of New York City itself. He has always put fashion and leisure at the center of his life, alongside hooping. He was also the first athlete to have a shoe line collaboration with a major brand in 1970, and his own media company called Walt Frazier Enterprises, Inc.

His taste for custom-tailored suits, flowery language, and living a very active night life, coalesced to create a sophisticated brand of celebrity. The club-hopping, his fan service, and passion for style are the blueprint for what athletes today strive for, to also become icons of "cool." His 1970s attitude is still very much part of his image, and Clyde is committed to keeping up a polished, but bold aesthetic, with a vocal temblor and vernacular so smooth you’d think you were in the quiet back corner of a cocktail lounge talking to a poet. Which makes sense, because Clyde was constantly at clubs chatting up every celeb and bartender, including times at Studio 54 with Teddy Pendergrass and Stevie Wonder. The man oozes confidence, and his fashion sense is an integral component of this image. Just look at this guy then and now. The man is consistent.

Walt “Clyde” Frazier in New York City circa 1973-1976 | Frazier in 2021 at Madison Square Garden

In a very seventies free-spirited way, Clyde embodies an unapologetic authenticity, one where style, sex, and sensibility are celebrated. The photographs and interviews of Clyde from the 1970s are abundant because he gave the press and fans an incredible amount of access. He was never afraid to say exactly what was on his mind, and elaborated his opinions with a confident, warm speaking style, while massaging self-deprecating embellishments and anecdotes into conversation. He is uncensored for better or worse (there are absolutely some slurs in those old interviews), but Clyde is a person with conviction, and people loved him for it. Here's are two excerpts from a profile in The New York Times in 1975:

He is extremely polite, has a wry sense of humor, and even when he is saying outrageous things—like “I have the best body on the whole Knicks team”—it's hard to hate him, because such bold statements are usually accompanied by several self‐effacing laughs on his part.

and

After all, he is Clyde, and there are those who say he rules New York. Frazier even said it once himself: “When people think of New York, they think of Frazier.” They think of him because, in a city based on Making It, he Made It big, and he did it his way, and then he flaunted it. And they think of him because in a city where people are always losing their cool, he never does.

His views on fame and what it means to be cool were documented extensively, and in 1974 he decided to publish a lifestyle and basketball manual called Rockin’ Steady that features chapters titled "Cool" and "A General Guide to Looking Good." 

Clyde Frazier and his honey‐beige and burgundy Rolls-Royce (Image Courtesy Bettmann/CORBIS)

His nickname came about because he loved to wear a four-inch brim hat akin to Warren Beatty’s in the 1967 movie Bonnie & Clyde. After a few seasons, Frazier made even more money, and he invested a lot into an increasingly vast collection of clothes. In a 1975 NYT article, Clyde remarks that one day he spent $10,000 on clothes, but it was, "mostly on a new white mink coat for bouncing around town." The dude loves to bounce.

In 1974 when he was making $600,000 per year (that’s over $3 million today), he owned 50 pairs of shoes, 18 hats, 49 suits, and a Rolls-Royce. Photographers would stop him on the street when he picked up his dry-cleaning to catch a glimpse of his glamor, and he would graciously chat with fans and the press. Even with the Rolls, he actually took the subway to games at Madison Square Garden, giving on-lookers a little taste of his designer image.

Clyde riding the subway (Image Courtesy AP)

1974 was a notable year for Clyde’s influence. He wrote Rockin’ Steady alongside New York sportswriter Ira Berkow and also made an appearance on the cover of Jet Magazine for a legendary profile where he talks about sex, his penthouse apartment, and life in the limelight. It’s clear Clyde loves excess, and embodying an unbelievable flamboyance. The man had a circular bed that rotated with a mirror above it and $3,500 mink sheets! “[The lady] said mink doesn’t shed. So mink it was,” he remarks. Damn, Clyde!

Image Courtesy Jet Magazine, 1974 (quote below attributed to same issue)

When I’m home, especially if there isn’t a game the next day, I might stay out and ‘boogie down’ until 3:30 in the morning, bring a woman home, have sex.

Walt Frazier retired from playing after 1979 and became a broadcaster for the MSG Networks sports programming in 1987. As a broadcaster, Clyde studied film reviews and the language of the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times to color the action on the court. He appreciated the way culture critics spoke about film or fashion in an embellished, lyrical way, and wanted to do the same for basketball. If you watch a game, you'll hear Clyde's glossy verbiage and notice how unique it is. There are a lot of rhymes like “dishing and swishing” or “mesmerizing and tantalizing,” and when The Knicks are losing “beguiling and bedeviling the Knicks that time.” When he started broadcasting there were jokes from fans that he was helping kids study for the SATs with his use of big words, but he was just trying something new.

The notion of being hip, of having that swag, comes from radical individuality, like Clyde’s. Walt "Clyde" Frazier doesn’t take himself too seriously, but it’s clear he’s always lived with the intention that to be cool is paramount above all else… except maybe basketball.

Obviously, some mink sheets and a closet of furs help too.

---

For Further Enjoyment-

Top Tracks:
Walt "Clyde" Frazier: The Cool On & Off the Court That Is the Knicks Legend
Ten reasons Walt Frazier was the biggest stud in the '70s

B-Sides:
Stylin' and Profilin' With Walt 'Clyde' Frazier
1973 NYT About Clyde's Penthouse - His Apartment Says ‘Clyde’ —As If You Couldn't Guess