According to lore, Penny Hardaway had the single greatest workout in NBA assessment history. Workouts usually involve running and jumping drills, endurance testing, jump shooting, basics, and some one-on-one hoops. This workout, however, was so great that it cemented this fellow’s position as first number one goddamn overall pick. No one knows what he did, but he did it that afternoon, stomping into every NBA General Manager’s head, creating a would be dynasty with young/roided Shaq (who has still not cashed any of his NBA paychecks… real talk), and jumping into a hell of an ad campaign that still leaves me misty.

No one’s quite sure exactly what happened during that workout, if the conversation was that resplendid, if he dunked from the three point line, or made 2 granny shots in a row playing 21 with Jerry Krause, turned down a date from Mitch Kupchak’s slutty kid, pulled a rabbit out of his Raptors bag, etc etc etc. This is not a normal state of affairs. We live in a pretty transparent age - Canadian legislative procedures notwithstanding (one love to party discipline and closed cabinet sessions) where legends don’t exist. I would reminisce, starry eyed, about Uppercut in my cold water flat until, one afternoon, surfing, I came across photos of their reunion show, carpenter jeans, empty room and all. Maybe there’s too much transparency. Maybe the world just never will be ready for Uppercut. I feel as if both these things are true.

But, getting back to the point, if the workout is legend, then he is legend. An NBA player, real name Anfernee first of all, had some early seasons that would be described as unholy were he not so quicksilver and sleek with that old ball. He was all pro for a minute. His sneaker ads, with a purgatorial, pre A-list Chris Rock rivalled any of the Jordan ads.. and as for the shoes..no one expected the first penny to do as well as it did. but along with Sprite, Scream II and the Lost Boys, they killed it. Everyone was balling in Penny’s. That’s just what it was.

But this was all window dressing compared to the Foamposite, the Penny One. It shut down the game. Legend (legend) has it that the Nike guys came in to his office/pool house with a hundred models, each a different peak of Nike footwear technology. “oh this thing? it weighs half a pound, cools your feet while you dunk and is designed after the dinner wing of the Taj Mahal. We call it the Air Uttar;” “Hey now Deon, this is a low top, but there is a quail feather sock liner that rises up to mid calf which the RAND corporation has proven prevents rolled ankles by 500% - it will roll Allan Houston’s ankles.” But out of either boredom or sheer insouisance he did not like any of these, taking the last “oh these? I forgot to throw them out on the way here” shoes from the lot. The shoes that looked like the jail cell in Demolition Man. I’d say that I’m not good enough a writer to describe this shoe (the only one I trust to capture this heat unit would be late James Joyce) but in reality I just havent been in enough wind tunnels or kept up with the Sloane-Kettering Memorial Institute’s research initiatives as much as I should.

The ones without the swoosh are better than the regular foamposites, and the lightning ones, which I believe got reissued, or are going to, are equal fire. These shoes look VERY weird on my feet, but it might have just been my Levi’s.

Just look at, and click on, the pics. This shoe - they destroyed the mould* - is a triumph of whimsy and fire. This shoe is legend because it was picked on a lark, was the last one in the pile, and has spanked every non-bron pro hoops shoe that came out since (one love to J Kidd) it came out. Penny, meanwhile, is kind of a punch line now. No one remembers how unreal he was. He could have ran the league if not for injuries. Playing through the early part of this decade, he has nonetheless fallen on lean times, none leaner than his return to the Heat, with Shaq, as #7.

click here:

*i should mention that somehow, the mould was either dug up or pieced back together from the million tiny pieces it used to be in and the shoe was retroed a few times last year. at the exact same price point that the originals go for. legend.