Jason Terry always wanted to be like his dad, Curtis. They looked and sounded alike, but that wasn't enough. In 1992, his freshman year in high school, Terry was looking through a family photo album and spotted a picture of his dad wearing knee-high socks. That was all he needed to see. He's been wearing them ever since.

Incredibly, Terry goes through almost a thousand pairs of socks per season. He wears five pairs for each game and practice: one pair of mid-calfs go on first, followed by two pairs of knee-highs and finally another two pairs that reach just above the ankle. "I gotta have 'em fresh for every game," says the second-year Atlanta guard. "When I'm done with them they go to the sock graveyard."

Terry plans to wear knee-highs for the rest of his career. He knows what can happen if he doesn't. When he played in the Rookie-Sophomore Challenge during All-Star weekend, the league didn't bring his beloved tubes, so he had to wear the special edition All-Star ankle socks. "They wouldn't let me wear the high ones," he says. He finished with just 3 points.

Terry wearing ankle socks is like Tom Green being serious. It's not something that's going to happen on its own. Remember the knee-highs he wore at 'Zona with the word "CATS" on them? His socks have become his identity -- as well as the target of hecklers on the road. He's heard everything from "Pull your socks down, Terry!" to "Who do you think you are, Michael Cooper?"

"But I need them," Terry explains. "I'm naked without them."

Chris Palmer covers The NBA Life for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at christopher.palmer@espnmag.com.