Spinotron x The Sneaker Savant
An early installment of 'shoes on cards'
I’ve been following Spinotron’s card account for quite a while now…I’ve always liked his ‘thematic’ posts as I feel like I have a similar thought process. He appears to be a completist…or, at least, a thematic completist, which is something that I can certainly understand and respect. I’m not sure how I found his account, but it is one that I enjoy.
When he reached out to me to ask if we could potentially collaborate on a ‘shoes on cards’ post, I was more than interested. He asked if I could write something for a handful of cards and…I went a bit overboard…
We agreed that he’d post his caption and he’d include some of my writing in the images themselves…
Here’s what was posted:
Instead of letting the rest go to waste, I figured I’d post it here.
The following is what I sent him…keep in my mind, ‘Sheed is my favorite from this batch.
I know that people collect (things) for a multitude of reasons, and many of our reasons are different, but one of the reasons I collect sneakers is *because* of my early interest in collecting sports cards. My parents got me started with toys but my older cousin is responsible for turning me onto 1987 Topps baseball cards, which soon turned towards basketball cards…of which…I think…is where my love of sneakers really began to take shape.
The thing about basketball cards (and basketball players), is that the players always seemed more relatable to me than other sports. I think the uniform that is worn on court (ie: short sleeves and shorts with bare faces and legs) makes it a lot easier to see the human performing the magic.
My love of MJ, for example, started with cards. I never saw a basketball game until WELL after I began collecting MJ basketball cards. And I collected MJ basketball cards for a lot of reasons, but…because…MJ just had the swag of a million men, his shoes really added another element to the card.
So, when @spinotron asked me if I could comment a few players on an old set - I took a look at the shoes and thought…this is *exactly why* I collect.
The MJ card is kind of unique in this set, though, because it’s one of the only cards where you *can’t actually see the shoes he’s wearing. So when Spino asked me if I could identify them, I said ‘based on the black pinstripe jersey alone I’m guessing they’re 12s.’ Spino *then* found the same card but with BLEED, and I was able to catch a glimpse of the upper medial: MJ is wearing cherry 13’s.
For me - the time of the 72-10 bulls and the pinstripe jerseys - this will always be when MJ was the GOAT…and…being that the Playoff 12’s are my favorite Jordan ever…I can’t help but wonder if I were born just one year later…would my favorite be the cherry 13’s? Whatever it is…those black pinstripe jerseys with the white and red shoes was always such a deadly combination…whether they be 12’s or 13’s, these shoes defined that era for me. And that era is the reason we made the #NBAOneDay set…what is the most memorable MJ era for you?
There are so many amazing shots of Kobe contorting his body in unimaginable ways all for a look at the basket. Sure, you see others in similar poses, but the sheer number of shots with Kobe staring at the basket just reminds you as to how different this guy was. Kobe jumped on the scene about the same time I started coming into my own, and at the time, his shoes were *way* more attainable than Jordans, so it was a lot easier to humanize him (compared to MJ). That’s not to say he was *less than*, but he was still a god…just…a different type of god.
The shoes - on this card, they’re kind of cut up and misshapen by the die cut…and…embarrassingly enough, I actually had a bit of a difficult time deciding what they were. I know now they’re Crazy 8’s, or, as they’ve been come to be called KB8’s, but the fingers on the bottom aren’t visible nor the chunky FYW style sole. And the heel is nearly missing and split in half. Obviously, whoever did the cards cared more about Kobe than his shoes.
In the early days, this was *THE* Kobe shoe. I called this the ‘Kobe 1’ well before there ever was an actual (Adidas) ‘Kobe 1’, or another (Nike) ‘Kobe 1’…and that name…The ‘Crazy 8’…I always thought it should have been called ‘The Krazy 8’. In my head, there were really 2 era’s of Kobe…’with Shaq’, and ‘after Shaq’. And the Krazy 8 was the ‘with Shaq’ shoe and the Kobe VI was the ‘after Shaq’ shoe.
I know card guys tend to shy away from products that aren’t ‘officially licensed’, I tend to stay away from cards of iconic players in non-iconic shoes. IMO, this is the epitome of an iconic player in HIS iconic shoe.
For as much of a beast this dude was on court, it really is kind of a bummer he didn’t have a bigger impact in the sneaker world. Don’t get me wrong, he wore a few gems on court…imo Flightposite, Uptempo 97, and a few of his Adidas shoes were *ok*, but none of them really looked good on him IMO. None really screamed ‘THESE ARE TIM DUNCAN’S SHOES’ to me. Even the Total Flightposite Max and the Duncan 1 & 2 looked goofy as hell to me…they looked far too big for anyone nicknamed ‘the Big Fundamental’ should be wearing…
The Nike above, tho, I don’t think there are too many pics of Duncan wearing it. It took me the better part of an hour to find the name for this one as it was (regrettably) one of the ones we DID NOT document in our #NBAOneDay card set…and when I found it…through @defynewyork…they labeled it as the ‘Juwon Howard’ Nike and it’s amazing what the mind forgets. It’s funny, though, because the Nike MZ3’s he’s wearing on the above card actually *do* look like TIM DUNCAN’S SHOES to me. Moreso than Juwan Howard’s. There were a few pairs that were sleek enough for a big man to pull off and…funny enough…these are one.
And…as like a ‘revisionist history’ kind of thing, I think I’d like to see more Duncan cards with a shoe that actually looks like it belongs to him. Personally, I think I’d prefer to rewrite Duncan’s sneaker history, if possible, and with that I’d start here…with the Nike MZ3.
This one took a bit of digging. I initially thought ‘hm, that’s funny, why is TMac wearing CB34’s? But upon closer inspection (and some help from the OGs in the @SneakerHistory discord), we came to the name ‘Adidas Lockout’. This isn’t a well-documented pair and it appears that only a couple of images exist online…
I know some people love the whole TMac line and I’m just not one of those guys. I was never all that impressed with TMac as a player and never felt like his shoes looked good on anybody *except* him.
If you asked me who my favorite player was, in 1998, I would have said Stephon Marbury. And I don’t think I was basing that off anything other than a handful of articles and a @slammagazine cover story that might or might not have been directly attributed to @russbengtson . I don’t even know if I actually *read* the article, but the visuals were just *so* compelling. I had them plastered all over my locker. And that @and1 logo around Steph’s neck was the coolest shit in the world. Incomparable.
It was New York.
It was street.
It was dope.
I found a pair of And1 Starbury 1’s for $28 at Copelands sports and rocked the hell out of them. And when the 2’s dropped, my bestie copped a pair and said ‘they were terrible for his feet’. They were a great *looking* followup to a classic, but apparently there were some lacing issues. That’s the pair that Steph is wearing in picture above: The Starbury 2’s.
I know Steph had a couple of other shoes with And1, and some people (mistakenly) attribute the super-popular Tai Chi to Steph, but to me the only ones worth remembering are the 1 and the 2. The rise and the fall. The 3, although also somewhat popular, didn’t resonate with me at all. I dunno why.
There’s an incredible documentary about the And1 years and another incredible documentary about Stephon Marbury on Netflix and if you watch both, in succession, you’ll gain a bit of understanding as to why these were the only 2 shoes that mattered (to me).
When I was like 16 years old my parents asked me which college I wanted to go to, and with no frame of reference I blurted out ‘UNC’.
Parents: “Why UNC?”
Me: ‘Well, grandpa lives in North Carolina I figure I can just stay with him.’
My parents were impressed that I had such grand plans.
Truthfully, I had no idea what UNC meant nor did I know anything beyond ‘this is where Michael Jordan went to college and I really like baby blue and white and I recently bought a $40 Nike UNC Jersey for a player who wasn’t actually named but was somehow attributed to Ed Cota’.
The thing is, when you buy a jersey, or a hat, or something that is meant to represent a team or a place or something that you’re not all that familiar with…and people start asking you about it trying to find some common ground…if you can’t speak on it…you just end up looking like an idiot. So it’s usually good to educate yourself before you go representing a team or a person before such an event occurs. But here I was, in my 17 years on this earth full of hubris.
So, it was with my Ed Cota jersey that I suddenly felt like I needed to know what was going on with ‘the college I wanted to go to’. And, at the time, I guess that had to do with Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse and Eric Montross. Another name to watch.
Seeing ‘Sheed in this shoe - the Air Uptempo 97 - which I almost always came to associate with Scottie Pippin - was a bit of a surprise. I almost forgot Sheed actually had a different life before he began to dominate the Western Conference in the Air Force 1 High…it almost makes you wonder…was it the headband that gave him the power to transcend or was it the AF1’s that come to define his on-court style??
If anyone wants to talk about the relationship between cards and shoes - you know where to find me!
How does a card with bleed come about? I imagine an insider snags an uncut sheet or a mis-cut sheet before it gets destroyed.