While I stopped following the NBA years ago, I have to give kudos to two of their current players who are swimming against the tide.  Stephon Marbury has introduced a line of $15 basketball shoes.  Not only is he selling them, he also wears them during games so they must have at least some kind of quality workmanship applied to them.  This really is a breakthrough idea whose time has been overdue for two decades now.

I’m not going to address the fact that we can only have shoes this cheap by using Chinese (or other overseas countries) imports since almost everything cheap we have in this country is made in China.  The greater goal of this shoe campaign, putting affordable shoes within grasp of lower income families, is to be commended.  In fact, the expensive shoes are also made overseas so at least this line of shoes isn’t lining the pockets of already-overpaid athletes and the coke-sniffing marketing execs of these shoe companies.

Ever since I was a kid, expensive basketball shoes have been an issue that parents have faced.  Obviously parents should always have the final word but it doesn’t help when, as an impressionable youth, your sports heroes are hawking shoes your family can’t potentially afford.  As a kid who grew up in a poor household, I know the feeling of not being able to get those Isaiah Thomas Converse sneakers, settling for Traxx shoes with the Velcro strips.  To be honest, even middle and upper income families shouldn’t succumb to expensive athletic shoes either unless they truly are quality built, but at least the financial pressure is less an issue for them.

Now Ben Wallace is following Marbury’s lead and will be introducing his $15 shoe next year.  Obviously two players don’t make a trend but at least there are two guys realizing that, while they make enough to afford almost anything they want, there are kids who emulate them who simply don’t have the financial resources to buy new shoes all the time.  My hope, although I’m sure it will happen in lots of towns, is that the kids who buy these aren’t made fun of.  While it’s nothing I would buy since I like simple-looking athletic shoes (i.e. mostly white with thin black or blue trim), they appear to be stylish enough and definitely better looking than some of the $200+ shoes out there.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t buy low-end shoes but that’s simply because I usually don’t find shoes in the low price range to be comfortable at all.  Plus, unlike a kid who is growing all the time and getting a different shoe size every six months, I can buy high quality shoes that last longer.  That being said, if Marbury and Wallace are wearing these shoes, they must be somewhat comfortable since pro athletes are very demanding of all their equipment.