When Markieff Morris entered the NBA in 2012, he chose to live by a code. His shoes were the same, no billboard for anyone else—certainly not any discount. No star was big enough, no husband comfortable enough, and no one could earn the miles on Maurice’s feet or the space in his head.
Early on, he wore Nike Foamposites, then switched to Penny Hardaways. At Oklahoma City, he gave himself grace and the love of his teammates; Try Russell Westbrook and Paul George shoes. In Detroit, he turned to a pair of Jordans, but in Los Angeles, he put his sole on LeBrons. He teamed up with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving last summer and wore them on the court in Brooklyn, too.
It’s the only way Morris knows. His shirt isn’t the only garment that shows his loyalties. His sneakers are also a form of war. Put on another player’s signature shoes, and he’s ceded ground.
“How are you supposed to talk to someone when you’re wearing their shoes?” Asked.
However, Morris may be part of a dying generation in the NBA. It is no longer a sin to put on the shoes of another player on the field while playing against him. He said the unwritten rules for wearing signature shoes are changing, or even being erased.
More than 20 NBA players have their own shoes. Some of the league’s most popular—LeBrons, KDs, and PGs, all made by Nike—are among the most-often-worn, and others are more obscure, like Klay Thompson’s line with Anta. But it is increasingly no longer forbidden on anyone’s feet even when playing against the shoe of the same name. Look no further than these playoffs, where Kings star De’Aaron Fox wore a pair of Curry 10s on his feet as the Warriors cooked and Stephen Curry scored 31 points per game as Sacramento took a 2-0 lead.
It’s part of a drastic change across the league. Old rituals are fading away. As much as some warriors might regret it, they couldn’t fight it either. They may be flame keepers from another generation, but this could also go out with them.
Young players are no longer intimidated by veterans. Rookies are no longer being sent out on donuts and newspapers, and not just because players don’t read newspapers anymore.
“It’s a new day and age,” said Morris, 33. “There are a lot of crybabies. A lot of young people who really aren’t. These guys come into the league with a big name and they already have 100,000 or a million followers on Instagram or Twitter. They’re like, ‘What can you tell me?’ I’m already famous. “
this chapter, the athlete Pop in to see if there are any etiquette, unwritten rules, or unspoken advice, whatever you want to call it, about wearing another player’s signature shoes when playing against him. This is what we learned.
The shoes are an admired and an import in the basketball world. Only the big stars get their own streak, and everyone else has to wear something when they’re at a game. Stephen Adams may come onto the scene wearing flip-flops, but he’s wearing sneakers after all.
There is also a legacy of scraping towards showing excessive respect for opponents. Even Kobe Bryant had a blast over it, At least according to Gilbert Arenas, when he had the audacity to wear a pair of jordans against his namesake. Bryant could fit Jordan’s shoes, it seems, but he just couldn’t fill them.
Bryant, of course, had his own boots and, in the end, worked himself into the heads of his opponents. Kevin Love still had those words ringing in his head. Like Kobe used to say, Love said, “If someone wore my shoes and I was playing against them, I knew I had them.” “
The Apocrypha explores why putting on an opponent’s shoe during play can be tricky for some. if Sun Tzu Hopper was, perhaps, he would have phrased it this way: Do not let your enemy be executed, in the head or on the feet.
“I’m not going to do that,” said Pacers guard Terese Haliburton, one of the few All-Stars youngsters who still cares. “I don’t know; I think it’s just a mental thing.”
Not only does Halliburton dress up as the Kobes most of the time, but he also carries the Mamba mentality for that matter. On the rare occasion that he does wear someone else’s sneakers, be firm: “I don’t hold theirs against them.”
It’s understandable, but it also ignores two very important things: A basketball player’s feet are very important, and players are very particular about what happens to them.
Even love, as Kobe’s lyrics rock, makes exceptions.
He wears his own clothes Exclusive shoes for players From Nike most of the time, but he still wears a pair of LeBrons periodically. He’s worn the LeBron 20s at training camp and in practices this season and has worn past models since he was a teenager. He didn’t pit the LeBrons against the Lakers, but he will.
“I think it’s respectful,” he said, “and once guys get into a certain routine with what they want to go out there with, they stick to it.” “I’m the same way. I’m one of the many guys who have exclusives for players, but I think it’s funny. I understand what Kobe is saying, but you know some of these guys have these iconic shoes, and they’re cool for a reason.”
Corey Kispert couldn’t be moved to mix PGs even when he played Wizards with Clippers. He’s worn Georges since high school and the same shoes for four years now. It is what he knows and what he feels safe in.
It caught him hot in the locker room. He said Dillon Wright gave him a sideways look. But Kispert has a framework for his perseverance. He wants to be cool too, and in order to do that, he needs to wear the sneakers he knows best.
“I feel kind of uncomfortable and out of my routine and I’m kind of superstitious about wearing different shoes,” he said. “Even if we were playing Clippers, I’d wear them. But it also hurts me as a competitor. I know Paul George walks up there and says, ‘Oh, you put my shoes on.’ The big guy has a really lifted leg, but to me, it’s like a routine and rhythm thing. So, I I just don’t want to break it.”
He’s not the only one who snubs his teammates when it comes to some well-worn standards. A young Knicks man didn’t heed his call not to step into the shoes of a Nets star against Brooklyn when Durant and Irving were there — the interracial rivalry lives on in New York, said Nearness Noel.
Westbrook’s Dennis Schroeder may have heard of wearing KDs in 2019, but this year, plenty of Thunder players wore Durant’s shoes, too. Mike Moskala, who was with Oklahoma City prior to a trade with Boston in February, wore a pair of Leaf outfits in January in Brooklyn and would wear them even if Durant played that night. He said his options are limited. All the sneakers out there right now are tied to a player anyway, so that will happen.
Reggie Jackson is more succinct. He said he had been told before not to, and he did not take the advice. If he’s been wearing the same pair of sneakers all season, he won’t change them up just because the guy with his name on him was stepping onto the court against him that night.
“If it makes my feet feel so good, who cares?” He said. “It’s just shoes.”
There are degrees to all of this, too. Personal relationships are important.
Seth Curry tends to wear Steph’s Under Armor sneakers when they’re playing with each other. He only wears a curry. They are brothers after all.
Seth Curry, now a Nets guard, will sometimes wear a pair of throwbacks when he plays for the Warriors. Occasionally, he will have a new player exclusive to just this match. A few years later, Under Armor sent the brothers two pairs of shoes made specifically for their game. Curry said they only have two pairs of these shoes.
“He expects me to put his shoes on,” said Seth Curry. “I’m an Under Armor athlete, so (I) have to wear Under Armours. I’ll just wear Steve. Nothing competitive about it. It’s family. I feel like it’s a problem if I don’t wear his shoes.”
Love and James were teammates for four seasons, won a title together in Cleveland, and remained friends. They know each other very well, and this is important. This makes it easier to put his shoes on.
I played Noel with George. They’re tight. There are some sneakers he won’t wear against an opponent, but he’ll slip into a pair of PG shoes. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s convenient.
Noel said, “The fact that I’ve played him and he’s such a really good tough guy gives me even more inspiration to wear it, just his signature backing.”
Even the righteous find themselves complicated. Anthony Edwards adamantly refused when asked if he would wear signature shoes for a player against them in a match – and then admitted he had worn Adidas sneakers from Damien Lillard, James Harden and Donovan Mitchell. He said they deserved it, so it wasn’t weird for him.
How do the signing stars feel when they see their shoes on the field? Just grateful. Jordan and Kobe’s cruelty was replaced by appreciation.
“We put a lot of effort into these shoes,” said Durant. “It’s a great representation of who I am as a person. So for someone to represent me like that, it feels great.”
While those symbols felt like they were a way to get into the minds of their opponents, Durant doesn’t see any competitive advantage from them.
He said, “Hell no.”
George only sees validation for his grand designs. He wanted to make shoes that other players would be comfortable in and shoes that his fans would want to wear.
He wanted to make shoes for the player. Now, players are wearing his shoes.
He said, “It’s an honor to be respected to put my boots on, especially to play against.” “I know a lot of players who put my boots on, and when they play with me, they don’t want to put my boots on because they think I might look at it as an advantage I have against them. But I don’t look at it that way. It’s great that they want to put my boots on.”
Perhaps this explains how all this happened. In a league where collegiality reigns and there are few real controversies left, it would stand to reason that this would be another casualty of the NBA’s malevolent eras.
Even the most old school vets have made their peace. Udonis Haslem has been around the league since 2003; He will retire this spring, and he will have spent 20 seasons in Miami.
When he came to the NBA, he said, it was a bigger problem. Now, nobody cares.
“It was mental for me,” he said. “I never wanted to feel like I gave an opponent a competitive advantage or any kind of mental edge over me. I just felt like putting my opponent on shoes would give him a competitive advantage or a mental advantage. The game is already hard enough without giving your opponent a mental advantage. That was my concern. Everyone is not Like me. Everyone doesn’t look at things the way I do. Men are much friendlier nowadays, and kinder when they play against each other.”
Like Morris, Haslem believes the turning point came somewhere around five to seven years ago, and hasn’t reversed since.
Fighting him is no longer his business. He accepted the change, even if he didn’t accept it. He is unwilling to police the locker room for rule-breakers because the rules have been eroded. The Heat knocked Giannis Antetokounmpo sneakers off everyone’s feet several years ago when they faced the Bucks in the playoffs, Tyler Herro said, but that was by agreement of the team, not the order of a grizzled vet.
Instead, Haslem does what he’s done for a long time. He puts on his Li-Ning sneakers and continues on.
“I don’t know why men don’t take it as seriously as they used to,” he said. “At the end of the day, I guess it doesn’t really matter. If the opponent doesn’t look at it that way, it doesn’t really matter.”
(Illustration: Eamon Dalton / the athlete; Photos: Tyler Ross, Adam Pantuzzi, Barry Gosage and Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images)