Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

I love this story. I used to be an enthusiastic basketball fan, until the gold chains, teenage recruits, ridiculous salaries, baggy shorts, and bad behavior of the players contributed to an overall change in image.  I shed a few tears when Larry Bird left, but little did I know that we were losing more than a player, the standards that seemed to represent the game had only just begun to slide.

The move for the current role models to endorse and wear affordable shoes is growing. Along with New York Nicks Stephen Marbury, Ben Wallace of the Chicago Bulls is one of the players who recognizes this and now has his own shoe – the Big Ben – a new model of the $14.98 Starbury sneakers. In the article below, even Ralph Nader lends his support to this move within the context of a dissussion about the sweat shops that produce some of those $150 shoes other NBA stars endorse.

From the Today Show story below, on a basketball blog, Nader who has been unhappy with the conditions in the Chinese sweat shops that make the $100+ shoes Cleveland Cavalier’s super star LeBron James and others endorse considers this a challenge to the whole basketball sneaker industry. (YES! Lets send a message to all of these players!)

As I read about this, I wondered …did Wallace ever own a pair of Air Jordans?
From an AP story:
The 10th of 11 children and the youngest of eight boys, he grew up poor in White Hall, Ala. He knows he had shoes, but which brands? He couldn’t say.
“I had to wait in line,” said Wallace, who was wearing a White Sox cap, jeans, a striped short sleeve shirt and a pair of white Starbury low-top sneakers. “It’s tough at times because you see everybody else getting new shoes. You want to be a part of that crowd. Sometimes, you’re just not able.”

In 1985 when Michael Jordan introduced his pricey Air Jordans, a trend began that led to kids killing kids for their sneakers, thefts of sneakers, and more as inner city kids who looked at the NBA player as a hero, did what every they had to do to get a pair of his sneakers.

When the salaries and signing bonuses continued to climb into the millions, kids were being signed to the NBA right out of high school, and bad behavior suddenly became “cool” for our 6 ft + the role models, the game slowly lost its appeal for me.

Let’s hope this is a new trend that will lead to more responsiblity for what these multi million dollar role models really mean to their young fans…   Janet 

links to two stories -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17962620/
http://cbs.sportsline.com/nba/story/10091900/rss

Story from MSBC pasted below.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17962620/
NBA star sells $15 sneakers
New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury makes sneakers affordable
By Mike Celizic
TODAYshow.com contributor
TODAY
Updated: 10:40 a.m. ET April 5, 2007
As a kid growing up with six siblings, Stephon Marbury couldn’t understand why his parents couldn’t scrape together $150 to buy him the hot sneakers his heroes wore in the NBA.

When he grew up and understood how much money that was and how little his parents had, he decided to do something about it.

His solution? A $15 quality basketball shoe worn in games by the star point guard of the New York Knicks, Stephon Marbury.

“Anybody who grew up in a household with a lot of brothers and sisters, they know how it is as far as, you know, everybody wearin’ the same sneakers – hand-me-downs,” he told TODAY correspondent Kevin Corke.

The shoe, which comes in a variety of styles and fabrics, is called the “Starbury.” It’s made by Steve & Barry’s University Sportswear, and, while it is inexpensive, it’s not cheap or shoddy. Marbury introduced them last August and has just introduced the Starbury II, still at the same affordable price.

Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, called the product “the biggest business story of the year.”

Steve & Barry’s has given no sales figures, but it has been reported elsewhere that in little more than half a year, some three million pairs of Starburys have been sold. That’s been enough to inspire Chicago Bulls star center Ben Wallace to join Marbury in wearing the shoes for the remainder of this year. Next year, Wallace will have his own Steve & Barry’s line —the
Big Ben.

Growth of the signature shoe
Marbury grew up in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, while Wallace hails from small-town Alabama. But they have a lot in common.

Like Marbury, who had six brothers and sisters, Wallace came from a big family – he had ten siblings – and wore whatever shoes one of his older brothers had outgrown. Also like Marbury, he was offended at the exorbitant prices the big shoe companies charge for the signature footwear of the game’s biggest stars.

“Why you want your name associated with a pair shoes nobody can afford?” he told TODAY. “I think that defeats the purpose.”

Both players are foregoing big endorsement checks by putting their names on – and their feet in – inexpensive shoes. Once upon a time, all basketball shoes were affordable. But then Nike founder Phil Knight realized that if he could design a special shoe and put it on the feet of one of the game’s greatest players, he could charge a premium for them.

In 1985, he signed Michael Jordan, the promising young star of the Chicago Bulls, to an endorsement deal and brought out the first Air Jordan sneaker. The shoe was red and black with a big Nike Swoosh on the side and was so brash in their design that the NBA told Jordan he would be fined if he wore them in games. Knight gladly paid the fines and in no time at all, every kid in America had to have a pair.

As Jordan matured into the greatest player of all time, fans camped out in front of shoe stores to be the first to buy the latest model Air Jordan, and kids were mugged for their shoes. Jordan himself made more money from Nike endorsements than he did from playing basketball.   read the rest of this story here

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17962620/

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© 2007 MSNBC.com