What's your basketball shoe?

Topic: The cultural change of basketball shoes throughout the years

Relevance: We are studying cultural changes of different cultures in our textbook.

Source: From the NBA all-star game on Sunday February 26, 2012.

Description: Today was the NBA all-star game. I watch this game every year because it’s fun to watch all the best players in the league compete and play on the same team. But this year I noticed something different as I was watching the game. I saw these new shoes and different kinds of new shoes on every player. Some were wearing the same kind, while others were wearing their own shoes that they made. Like Kobe Bryant wearing his own shoes he designed; Dwane Wade wearing his own shoes he designed; Lebron James wearing his own shoes he designed. This got me thinking about what the old players used to wear back when basketball became really popular. During the seventies and eighties the players wore converse. Virtually all of them did, whereas now, virtually no one does. From the nineties on people became fonder of Michael Jordan’s brand of shoe line called Jordans. While Jordans are still very popular today, players are now wearing Nikes, Adidas, and other NBA player’s shoes; most of these players are still playing.

Comment/Analysis: What influenced this culture shift from almost all players wearing the same Converse shoe, to wearing all different kinds of shoes? While watching the all-star game, I noticed no difference in play between players and the different kinds of shoes they were wearing. And it’s not like players now-a-days are playing extremely better with these diverse shoes, than the older players who used to all play with the same shoe. So why change? I came to the conclusion that players in today’s league are more about money and what their image is than players in the older era. Shoe investments are worth so much more now than then. So players are necessarily making shoes because it make their play better, but because millions of people will buy their product and will help the already rich NBA player become even more rich. This was started with Michael Jordan when he first came out with his shoe line which still exists today. But once he came out with a shoe, everyone else wanted to come out with their own. Over the years the different pairs of shoes became more and more popular until there were so many shoes, and it seemed like no one was wearing the same pairs anymore. Even MJ stated he wore a new pair of Jordans every game.