PE crazy, crazy PE… Player Exclusives’ - one offs the sneaker companies make for actual basketball players - are always incredible, from the tan XVIIs they wear at Brown to whatever Ray Allen decides to put on this week. That these sheeds are in my size is even more outrageous. Doesn’t he know I don’t have $1000 immediately (4 days and change) available on something I need? I’ve written about sheeds below, so I’ll only mention how “both teams played hard” is the best way I imagine they describe successful marriages (it is Valentine’s day, the shoes are red). But it’s because it’s V day, and why wouldn’t someone put my dogg’s shoe up, in my size, for money, today?

PE sneakers’ values are barely defined by eBay prices, inasmuch that anything collectible can avoid eBay. There are always PE’s on ebay, sure, but more often than not, it’s the same guy selling the same pair of size 14 Bibby XIIs. The market itself is pretty hard to crack, as PE’s number in the handful. This one isn’t even Sheed’s number, it’s some guy named 30. George McGinnis? I wouldn’t be surprised. Some are so rare, you will never get them, the five dozen people who have all of them will never trade you. Sorry. After the rare eBay pair, your best bet would be to make friends with B1LLY HOYLE AINT NO CHUMP off niketalk, or someone off the grid. Good luck with that, too.

Here is a pair of vintage, OG - for our purposes - Nike Air Force One High’s, in purple and white, from 1992. This shoe is excellent for several reasons. First, it is monochrome. Only purple, purple stitching. There is some white, a swoosh, and the outsole is white. Most air forces with white outsoles can look fake; indeed, most are*. This instance is pretty real though: the quality of leather on this shoe is unbeatable. Nothing on a $700 Italian shoe I don’t mess with, but for a basketball shoe, it’s pretty damn good. These were made in China, yes, but the MIC Nikes are a little better than wherever they’re made now. This concept is nothing new, though. $2 Levi’s from Sears were sounder than any Swedish jean today, just like these dusty leathers spank a Lux out of the park like that.
You have to hand it to this shoe. It’s purple, it’s a high top, but it looks harder and tougher than a Timberland. I, myself am impressed. It should be noted that AF1s are very high, true high tops along with the AF2 and 3 High. I know my man Jay Bil has this exact pair. Reason enough to buy it, to be sure.

I suggest adding this seller to your favorites. He always has some serious heat, and those photos remind me of random stores in Delaware or Connecticut. Kind of a slip through the crack powerseller. One offs of not so much quikstrikes, but random small run shoes from the last few years you might have missed out on. I tend to have at least one of his auctions, active or otherwise, on my list at all times.

*One notable exception to this is the very fine Nike Hong Kong Air Force from, I believe, five years ago. I personally do not own a pair, but it is on my fairly short list of shoes I wish to buy, and maybe look at for twenty minutes when they come in the mail.

Here is one Lebron that’s fly. The low of the II. IMO the best low Lebron out there. It tends to look a little beat, but that’s because doggs haven’t been wearing them icy in a minute. But with some black socks, you’d be killing it. Cheap, too!

The illest of the forces. Coach Leather! Not as good as Gucci or LV, but good enough for two feet, if you ask me. Plus, a rare colorway (not the shoe, but of shoes in general), make this ragamuff a winner. Are these really a $200 shoe though? Come on.

What does everyone think of Chris Paul being in the running the MVP? Considering how odd votes are drawn to the trophy, it might be possible. But I’m not quite sure it’s his to win. First of all, Mo Pete is why that team is doing better, you know I’m a Raps fan. Paul IS nasty though, but he has a pretty good team. And PG’s should be their team’s MVP to begin with, but that’s me. It’s probably Lebron’s or KG’s to lose, in my opinion Lebron because his team is so putrid. I mean, they’re behind the Knicks in FG%. SMH. As for Garnett, I really feel like he’s doing more coaching than playing.. and he’s doing a lot of playing. They’re like a hot dog away from messing with a 1950s Indians or 70s Canadiens vibe, player coach and all that. Boston did a 180 because Jesus is spreading the floor and Garnett is heavier than.. well, Jesus. But the cavs, Lebron is getting incrementally better.. but those are Lebron increments, which are jumps most men will never make.

ps can we talk about Jason Williams
-friends with Randy Moss
-good hair
-complains
-is gangsta
Why doesn’t he have a shoe?

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.

One of the better shoes nike has ever made or run with. Sheeds, there were about 5 of them. First, if I’m not mistaken, the white (low), then the black, then another one, then the red. After that, there was a duotone or two, but by this point I had moved up north and it was harder to follow. Nike put a lot of time and money into the Sheed line, and a lot of extras. We’d see lows, monochrome. He’d wear mostly pistons colorways, highs. But how fly did they look on gettyimages or in SLAM?Out of all the things Rasheed Wallace was known for - big man, would foul out, would get T’d up, took that game to OT last year with a 1940s grandma-belly shot from half court, can have a decent work ethic, was a Tarheel (and a good one), is sometimes motivated, but not always, is always important (the Pistons can’t even beat the bucks without him), he will shut down Chris Bosh like it’s going out of style, he got sent away from portland for being a bad influence (in the 90s!), the NBA dress code was instituted because of him, his championship wrestling belt and his garbage bag, he sat out a quarter of the regular season because of technicals, he does not have one regional Detroit ad during the many, many league pass games I copped last year, the thing on his head - the most impressive is that he has played his entire career, college, Portland, Detroit and presumably high school, in Nike Air Force 1s.Do you know what that means? It is impossible to convey what kind of a feat this is. I did this for a weekend, I am quite thin, and I could barely make it to work the next week. After a game in Taiwans (that’s right) and a game in these same black sheeds, I was feeling the effects of a shoe as old as I am. My knees were shattered, my feet felt like loose bones in a bag, my back was tight and I had the shittiest kneck. These shoes have no support and very very little air. That a big fellow - and sheed is about 7′3, 500 lb - can pivot and shimmy, shoot, post up (well..not that last one) and lead the league in winshares*, in shoes designed more for being a hustler Barry than playing hoops, makes the rest of his life not seem like a New Yorker article.I wore this very pair on the train and got one of the best sneaker related compliments of my life (wealthy dowager). But after balling my spindly frame felt like shaq on Thanksgiving. Sheed is the guy, he does it himself. He’d be into that auction title, check that out. These shoes sell themselves, despite serious hindrance. This is why I will leave the room when the spurs come on but I will watch Pistons basketball on a sunny day. Whatup George Blaha..Click this link to see to believe:*probobly