Gabe Vincent and Max Stross of the Miami Heat sat in their lockers side by side at Madison Square Garden an hour before the game against the Knicks. Strouse ate vegetables and rice, and Vincent put on his uniform after practicing shots.
But Vincent paused when he heard Strouse talking about wiping the bottoms of his shoes with the palm of his hands.
“Oh,” said Vincent incredulously, “you’re a lick-and-lick guy?”
“I don’t lick,” said Strouss, dropping his reply fork. “I don’t lick. No, no, no.” His voice was tinged with indignation, as if Vincent had accused him of a crime. Vincent laughed.
Many players around the NBA are discerning, and some are superstitious, about how they ensure their sneakers get enough traction on the court. Some use different wiping methods: licking and sly wiping, in which they rub their saliva on the soles of their shoes, or dry wipes, in which they use only their hands. However, most of them rely on a wipeout board that sits on the sidelines of the NBA arenas. It is officially called the Slipp-Nott, but most players refer to it as a “sticky pad” or “sticky mat”.
“I feel like the sticky mat is a ritual at this point,” said Sixers guard Shake Milton. “It just feels like what you’re supposed to do.”
Slipp-Nott was created in 1987 by Jorge Julian, who left an ergonomics job at Northrop Grumman hoping to make basketball courts everywhere tougher with the sound of steady sneakers.
There are clear sheets on the top of the Slipp-Nott that are filled with adhesive (Julien declined to share the details for fear it would help his competitors). Once the paper has absorbed too much dust or dirt to function properly, the user can tear it off for a new one.
Adhesive bandages come in various sizes, but the standard is 26 by 26 inches, so large people who play basketball can put their feet on it. Some bands whose arenas have narrower sides, such as the Utah Jazz, call for a small or medium sized version. The pads can be as small as 15 by 18 inches, which is large enough for a men’s shoe size 20.
Julian’s first buyer in the NBA was the Los Angeles Clippers, who bought the Slipp-Nott in 1988 at a discount of $70 per pad and gave Julian a staff pass to the ring. At the time, players used wet towels and wiping methods to gain traction, so many were skeptical about the pad. To alleviate their fears, Julian uses his pass card, and goes into the locker rooms with a VHS tape recorder to capture testimonials from athletic coaches and players about the effectiveness of the pad.
Today, most teams use the Slipp-Nott and have pads customized with their team logos, but the price of these pads is now $588.
“This is like my savior,” said Golden State Warriors forward Anthony Lamb. “I always play in the same shoe, so sometimes when I run out of shoes, and I hit my shoe, I’m going to need that sticky pad.”
Lamb plays in the black version of the Paul George 6 sneakers from Nike. Worn pairs sit near his wardrobe, with new ones in chests. He said that sometimes he wears the shoes “five matches too long”, and they become slippery.
Lamb said that when the Warriors played the New Orleans Pelicans in November, he couldn’t get to the sticky plate before he came into the game and Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram made a move. causing him to fall backwards onto the court. Lamb was on the wrong end of the highlight and followed up jokes in the Warriors locker room.
“My feet didn’t come off,” Lamb said, laughing and resting his face in his palms, “and I was thinking like, Damn, I had to hit the sticky stuff.”
Golden State forward Jonathan Cuminga may have the most shoes on the team, with countless pairs often strewn in front of his dresser and inside his dresser drawers.
While many players use the pad or sweep method, Kuminga usually does not rely on either. He said he wipes the bottom of one shoe on top of another, in part because it saves time, and because he’s been doing it since he was a kid. Because of this, many of the shoes in Kuminga’s closet look brand new except for the laces, torn and covered in dirt and dust.
“I hope, one day, if I buy my own shoes, I can maybe add something on my laces so anytime I wipe, I don’t have to mess up the laces anymore,” Cuminga said, holding a pair of shoes. With blue laces stained with black.
Knicks big men Isaiah Hartenstein and Obi Toppin always finish their pre-game routine by wiping their shoes on the Slipp-Nott. Hartenstein sprints to the plate first, usually after the start is announced, and Tobin follows shortly after his teammate, tearing up a sheet of paper upon completion.
Hartenstein almost forgot to do his part in his routine before Game 5 against the Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, but Tobin punched him in the chest and directed him at the plate.
“It’s definitely a ritual for us,” Hartenstein said. “We have to do that before every game, and I always go first. We almost got into a fight once because he went first. It won’t happen again.”
After creating the Slipp-Nott in the late 1980s, Julian dominated the court traction market in the NBA which changed in 2011 with the introduction of the Court Grip, a bottled liquid product developed by Mission Athletecare that users can rub on the bottoms of their shoes. Dwyane Wade, then star of The Heat, was a partner.
Mission Athletecare founder and president Josh Shaw said at the time that “it’s probably going to take six to 12 months for people to realize it’s outdated,” referring to Slipp-Nott. A brief rivalry began for the supremacy of the court, but it was the court’s hold that eventually became obsolete. The gray bottle has vanished from the sidelines, and right now, the sticky plate has the hearts and soles of players across the NBA.