Mike Woodson has already told J.R. Smith to get rid of his blonde hair.

Although NBA players have experimented with their hairstyles and general looks for years, various franchises and coaches maintain strict rules about how their employees should look. The league's dress code is but one aspect of this set of guidelines. The idea is not only that the organization wants to present itself to the public in a certain way, but that the practice has ties to broader disciplinary issues. If a player follows the rules of how he should look, he's more likely to act appropriately in other ways, too. There's plenty of room to argue against these practices — I think they're needlessly conservative and ineffectively superficial — but they exist.