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A timeline of basketball shoe history

posted by Jason Kottke Aug 04, 2004

A timeline of basketball shoe history.

Reader comments

Salvador ZapienAug 04, 2004 at 2:14PM

Pictures would have been nice, but still, a good read. Thanks.

jason streedAug 05, 2004 at 9:32AM

I was in junior high when the first Air Jordans came out. If memory serves, only two types of guys wore them: hotshots who could actually play (the kind *invited* to basketball camps) and hotshots who were actually posers (the kind with way more mouth than game). After the Big 2--Nike, Adidas--you had a couple of second tier brands like Reebok and (the already waning) Converse, and then there were smaller camps devoted to afterthought brands like Asics, Avia, Pony, etc. (I liked Asics, actually, but I polished a lot of pine.)

When my 8th grade class put together a time-capsule, my mom suggested that my contribution should be a bunch of basketball shoe ads, since that's what lots of guys seemed obsessed with. I think I put in a broken Atari 2600 cartridge.

This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.