8. What has been the surprise storyline of the first half of the season concerning kicks on court?
Pollakoff: LeBron not wearing his signature kicks for most of the year has to be right up there. It’s flown a bit under the radar for reasons discussed above, but the best player in the game not wearing his new signature shoe for much of the season has been a fascinating storyline to watch.
Schwadron: Matt Bonner! No, seriously, Matt Bonner! I don’t know whether to be elated on his behalf that he’s signed a deal with adidas, or totally bummed out by the fact that we won’t ever get to see what might have happened when he got down to that last pair of discontinued New Balance joints. And why hasn’t adidas given the Red Rocket—er, Red Mamba—a totally ridiculous PE yet?
Holdahl: I guess it’s not entirely surprising given the brand has had a hell of a time making inroads outside of retros, but the inability of Jordan Brand to make any real progress among NBA players despite turning out a few great models and having a legit stable of names under their umbrella always stuns me. By all accounts, the Jordan XX8 is a great shoe to hoop in, but you rarely see them being worn by any player not being directly payed by JB.
Second place goes to Steph Curry leaving Nike for Under Armour, though players leaving the Nike and adidas’s of the world for lesser known brands has been on the uptick recently as well.
Kiel: Matt Bonner. I just thought he would wear New Balances until they gave out and naturally switch to playing barefoot afterwards.
Cason: I’ll go with surprise and disappointment and say the injuries this season. Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Nate Robinson, Dwyane Wade, Kobe. Injuries are always a part of the game, but so many big names have lost time this season because of injuries that it’s affected some really good kicks from being on display, in some cases signature kicks by the athletes they’re intended for like Kobe and D. Rose.
DePaula: It’s been cool to see all of the Under Armour PEs that Stephen Curry has been wearing, and I’m always closely following all of the players and their shoe deals. With next summer being a huge sneaker free agent class, I’ve been keeping an eye on Stephen now that he’s switched over, and also Paul George, who will be a free agent this summer. On that note, a big surprise was adidas signing both Jeremy Lin and Matt Bonner. They obviously have different levels of impact for much different reasons, but it was cool to see both of those guys have fun with how they announced their new deals. Two things that really stick out and will definitely be looked back on a few years from now are just the fact that LeBron only rarely wore his 11th model, and that Kobe missed huge, huge chunks of the season. Of all the years to do a Prelude Pack, it was just tough luck for Nike this fall, as they were definitely expecting him to be out there for more than 6 games. Another big surprise is that things have been pretty quiet with Jordan Brand. I liked the Christmas Day XX8 SEs and that’s an amazing shoe to play in, but there hasn’t really been much else that caught my attention.
