High fashion is afoot on NBA courts
Rule change allows players to showcase amped-up sneakers
Anyone watching the opening games of the 2018-19 National Basketball Association season would have been hard-pressed or colorblind not to notice something seriously afoot on the basketball court.
The Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum kicked off his season wearing a pair of color-blocked Nike sneakers that had more in common with a Piet Mondrian painting than his team uniform. His teammate Jaylen Brown hit the hardwood shod in a pair of mismatched Adidas T-Mac IIIs, bright red on one foot and bright blue on the other. In Detroit, the Pistons’ Langston Galloway started the season in a pair of customized Q4s as colorful as a box of melted crayons. For the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Jordan Clarkson, opening-day footwear consisted of Grinch-green Nike Kobe 6s, while then-Utah Jazz player Alec Burks went with a pair of impossibly bright pink Adidas Dame 4s that were a nod to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Over the next several months, the cavalcade of colorful kicks only grew. Two days after comic book legend Stan Lee’s death in November, the Brooklyn Nets’ Spencer Dinwiddie pounded the parquet in a pair of sneakers customized with superhero imagery to honor the Marvel Comics legend.
The amped-up sneaker style is no accident; it’s the direct result of an NBA rule change removing the color restrictions that previously limited regular-season on-court footwear to combinations of black, white, gray or team colors. (Some restrictions remain, such as a prohibition against reflective fabrics and flashing lights.)
“We made the change to provide our teams and players with a vehicle to showcase their individuality as well as their passion for basketball footwear,” Christopher Arena, the NBA’s senior vice president of identity, outfitting and equipment, said in an email.
It’s clear that the change has done more than simply add pops of color; it’s helping reshape the role the sports shoe plays in a modern day-to-day wardrobe.
Limited-run sneakers are player exclusives — either a unique fabrication or colorway made exclusively for brands’ endorsed athletes or off-the-shelf shoes hand-customized at an athlete’s request by sought-after artists, such as Los Angeles native Salvador Amezcua, whose nom de shoe is Kickstradomis.
According to Josh Benedek, Nike’s North America media relations director, the lifting of the color restrictions has another benefit: It gives Nike and, therefore, rivals Adidas and Under Armour and every maker and customizer of shoes a way to see what generates interest and social media buzz. If Kyle Kuzma, for example, wants to wear a custom colorway of a particular shoe and there ends up being a fervor around it, that might inspire a future colorway, Benedek said.
“Even before they lifted the ban on colors, (people) were focused on the players walking through the tunnel (into the arena) talking about what they’re wearing be- fore the game and after the game. Now we get to talk about what they’re wearing on the court too.
... It’s like there was one kind of camera lens (on watching the game), and the NBA has pulled the lens off. And now we can see it all,” said Isack Fadlon, owner and chief executive of Melrose Avenue indie retailer Sportie L.A.
If this sort of synergistic showcase sounds familiar, it should; luxury fashion brands have been doing this on the catwalk and the awards-show red carpet long before the NBA was in short pants (or in existence for that matter). And, as any student of sneaker history can tell you, a heightened hardwood profile has the potential to catapult a single pair of colorful kicks into the pop-culture pantheon.
That’s because on or around Oct. 18, 1984, according to a letter from the NBA to Nike, Michael Jordan stepped into a preseason game wearing certain black and red Nike basketball shoes that violated league policy. Legend has it that Jordan continued to wear the noncompliant color combination, incurring a $5,000-per-game fine from the NBA, a fine that, also according to lore, Nike was more than willing to pay to reap the publicity windfall.
Neither the league nor Nike would confirm that such fines were actually threatened, levied or collected (although the NBA furnished a copy of the letter from its archives). However, a quarter of a century later, what actually happened isn’t as important as what Nike did next. Letter in hand, it seized the marketing opportunity surrounding the banned color combination by launching an ad campaign.
The result? Not only was the Air Jordan 1 sneaker a huge success right out of the gate, it helped lay the groundwork for an entire Nike-owned Jordan Brand that in 2018 saw $2.86 billion in revenue.