Tall Orders : Height of fashion for these NBA players is custom clothing that fits their long frames--not to mention their sense of style. The quest to establish a ‘rep as a dresser’ has led them to a Costa Mesa clothier and to tailors who can suit their tastes.

Where do basketball players go to celebrate the signing of their first NBA contract? No, not Disneyland. Many of them make tracks to a tailor.

Some players are just too tall to wear off-the-rack menswear--suits, jackets, pants--typically designed to fit men 6 feet, 3 inches and shorter. Others may be able to find a suit jacket that will fit, but the matching pants will be too large. So most NBA players are only too happy to indulge in custom-made clothing. And why not? Suit prices may start at about $1,000, but the average NBA salary is $1.33 million.

When they join the brotherhood of the NBA, rookies are frequently introduced to a nationwide loop of stores and tailors that specialize in athletes.

A stopover in the Los Angeles area to play the Lakers or Clippers is an opportunity to shop at David Rickey and Co., a custom-clothing store in Costa Mesa that counts hundreds of athletes--basketball players, jockeys and everyone in between--among its customers. As do most custom-clothing stores, David Rickey stocks swatches rather than suits, but the store does carry shoes, ties, furnishings and a full line of sportswear.

Rick Lamitie, one of the owners, says basketball players are big business. Magic Johnson appears in David Rickey’s magazine advertisements and is wearing clothes from the store on the cover of the February issue of GQ magazine.

The average price for a custom-made suit from David Rickey is $1,700, Lamitie says. Shaquille O’Neal (Orlando Magic), David Robinson (San Antonio Spurs), Shawn Kemp (Seattle SuperSonics), Scottie Pippen (Chicago Bulls) and Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Dunleavy are customers, as is 6-foot-10 Clipper Danny Manning, “but he won’t tell anyone that he shops here because he doesn’t want anyone looking as good as he does,” quips Lamitie.

“What we do is we design custom wardrobes for men. We take care of everything--from sportswear to formalwear. And we give our clients portfolios of all the combinations and tell them where the clothes should be worn,” he adds.

Designer Everett Hall of Silver Spring, Md., also outfits many NBA players. One of his customers is 6-foot-6 Charles Barkley of the Phoenix Suns, who buys his suits twice a year, 10 at a time.

Once some players become accustomed to wearing one-of-a-kind jackets, Sea Island cotton shirts and made-to-order cashmere overcoats, they take an active role in designing their own garments and finding unusual fabrics.

When he’s on the road, 6-foot-9 the Seattle SuperSonics’ Sam Perkins spends his free time shopping for suit fabrics. Others, such as Laker James Worthy and Kevin Willis of the Atlanta Hawks, have opened their own custom-made clothing businesses.

Willis, 7 feet, studied fashion design at Michigan State before he went to the NBA. As a teen-ager, he says, “I knew what looked good, what colors worked. I was good at putting things together even though we had no money and I had no clothes.” He says it was mid-season of his rookie year when he cut loose and started ordering custom clothing.

For rookies who want to cut a clothing swath--and Willis says lots of them want to establish a “rep as a dresser”--there are old-timers in the NBA who will guide them to the custom tailors and stores that specialize in large sizes. Mark Jackson of the Clippers, 6 feet, 3 inches, says it was “some of the older guys” who introduced him to his Houston tailor, K.W. Wong.

Players and team officials confirm that when teams go to Atlanta to play the Hawks, a pit stop at Friedman’s-- the place for men’s shoes in large sizes--is a must. The three-story shop stocks thousands of pairs of shoes (prices range from $65 to $1,000). And while most stores top out at a Size 13, Friedman’s carries sizes up to a 20. This year Friedman’s published its first mail-order catalogue.

Owner Bruce Teilhaber can rattle off a long list of NBA clients: Laker A.C. Green , Isiah Thomas (Detroit Pistons), Hakeem Olajuwon (Houston Rockets), Barkley, Worthy, and Manute Bol (Philadelphia 76ers.) As for Atlanta Hawk Dominique Wilkins, “he’s a great customer; he’s bought every shoe in the store,” Teilhaber says.

When the schedule takes a team to Washington to play the Bullets, many players will detour to see the Hall brothers of Silver Springs, Md. Everett (the designing half of the duo) and Edwin (the business half) make custom suits and sportswear. Eighty percent of their big spenders are athletes, says Everett, who charges $795 to $1,250 for a suit.

Patrick Ewing, 7 feet, of the New York Knicks, and James Edwards, 7 feet, 1 inch, of the Lakers, are regular customers, as is Barkley. Last year Barkley called the Halls and said, “I need something for the Olympics.” The order was open-ended. Five suits, five shorts and matching shirts, and 15 pants with matching shirts later, he was ready to go for the gold.

The Halls offer a crash course in fashion to the rookies. “We teach them about what they need for different working environments,” Everett says. “Such as what kinds of suits they’ll need when they purchase real estate, or what to wear to the bank--the navies and pin stripes. But they also need vibrant jackets to wear on ‘Arsenio.’ They need things that look good on TV. A potential sponsor might see them and consider them for endorsing products.”

The Halls also have a retail line for regular-sized guys under the label Everett Hall. Some of the custom-made styles have found their way into this collection that sells in Bullock’s South Coast Plaza Men’s Store).

Perkins, one of the most sartorially splendid SuperSonics, recently ordered some clothing from the Halls, but he prefers to shop for his own fabrics, which he then takes to K.W. Wong, who charges $750 to $850 for the suits. Perkins spends $10 to $25 a yard for unusual fabrics in bright colors and knows how much yardage it takes to make a suit to fit his 46-inch chest and 37-inch waist. He has his shirts made by Heidi Kelly in Dallas, whom he discovered during his days playing for the Mavericks.

“As soon as I could afford tailors, I started using them, because I knew the look I wanted,” Perkins says. In his most extravagant year he bought 16 suits, but now he says he is on a budget and has “slacked off.”

Jackson, one of the flashiest dresser on the Clippers, wears a 44L. He could buy his suits off the rack, but like most of the other NBA players, he prefers custom-made clothes. Even in a town with the resources of Los Angeles, he can’t find exactly what he wants, so he uses tailor Barbara Bates in Chicago. “She has the bright colored fabrics and things that stand out,” he says.

Some players moved into their own fashion businesses by way of endorsements. Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls paraded around in his skivvies for Hanes underwear, then he moved into the retail fashion arena. Now he has a moderately priced line of men’s suits and sportswear called Bugatchi Uomo for Michael Jordan. Magic Johnson started an NBA franchised T-shirt line and opened his own sportswear and activewear store, Magic’s 32, while he was still playing. Now that he has retired, he has purchased an interest in the trendy Los Angeles streetwear company Cross Colours.

Four years ago, Worthy began a custom-shirt business called Measure Up With James Worthy. After three years, he expanded into suits and sports clothes. A year ago the West Los Angeles company was renamed James Worthy Custom Clothier.

The first James Worthy Custom Clothier store recently opened in Palos Verdes. Worthy hopes to eventually have five or six stores that sell his custom-made goods--groundwork for his post-NBA career.

The Worthy style is conservative: “I’m not the most fashionable guy on the team,” he says. And of the 500 cusomers on his active client list, only a few are jocks. The majority are corporate executives. “When you do traditional and European styles, it’s hard to focus on just athletes,” he says.

Worthy takes a hands-on approach to his business. He is learning about patterns, cutting fabric and manufacturing. He makes sales calls and admits that when clients meet him for the first time, they expect him to be little more than a figurehead, “until I pull out my measuring tape.”

For several years Willis had a store in Atlanta that sold custom leather clothes. In the past year he closed it, he says, because the selling season for leather goods in the deep South is too short. But he has developed three new clothing lines, which he hopes to deliver to department and specialty stores in the fall. He is also providing custom-made clothes for his former clients.

One of his retail lines, bearing the label Kevin Willis for Black and White, is a funky streetwear collection--all the pieces are black or white and sell for $15 to $200. A second line, a group of unconstructed jackets, pants and shirts in neutral colored linen, will sell for $50-$150 a piece. The third line is a high-end signature collection--suits and sportswear--with prices from $500-$1,100.

This last group is more in the Willis style--the colors are bright, and the patterns are bold. “I try and make an everlasting impression,” he says.