Yutang Sports Note:

One week ago, Nike publicly announced that it had signed LeBron to a lifetime contract. In other words, "KingJames" will be the face of Nike for his entire career. Since its establishment in 1972, this is the first lifetime contract given away by Nike.

Their partners include Jordan in the front, Kobe Bryant and Durant in the back, and "AirJordan" is still the hottest main series sold by Nike. It is said that the "God of Basketball" who will cooperate with Nike for life has not received such a contract in name, why can LeBron be favored by Nike?

First of all, LeBron's sneaker sales reached $340 million last year, and he is the undoubted top superstar of Nike; secondly, UnderArmour gave Durant $300 million for 10 years last year, forcing Nike to continue to raise the price to renew Du Shao's contract; finally, UnderArmour picked Curry with a clear eye, and Curry won the MVP and led the team to win the championship for 15 years, their sneaker sales have skyrocketed by 754%, It's rewriting the current landscape of the NBA shoe sponsorship market.

Nike neither wants to take the risk of bidding with other brands at this stage, nor does it want to face the dilemma of being surpassed by the dark horse UA in the future and its stars turning away, the most critical point: no matter how ferocious the new MVP is, LeBron is still the most dominant player in the league at the moment, and there is still a lot of untapped commercial value in him. Nike has already tasted the sweetness of a superstar shoe sale, and it was obviously a good idea to make "KingJames" the next "AirJordan".

Another superstar has been offered a huge contract by sponsors this summer, with Adidas signing a 13-year, $200 million contract for Rockets core Harden to poach him from Nike. Adidas also gave Harden a special dowry gift: there is a saying in the sneaker industry that Nike first launched Erving's signature shoes last year, which made Harden very dissatisfied, and Adidas took advantage of it. It can also be seen from this that the competition in the NBA shoe sponsorship market is becoming more and more fierce, and it is no longer the era when one or two were dominant in the early years.

Since the NBA, there is the concept of sneakers, Converse was founded in 1908, in the same year the United States formulated a global unified basketball rules, in 1917 Converse officially released the world's first professional basketball shoes, 3 years later Adi-BA was officially born in 1949, the predecessor BAA was also founded in June 1946. In other words: basketball shoes first, then the NBA. Now, decades later, basketball shoes have become an inseparable part of the NBA and even the world basketball world.

As ordinary fans, we will never be able to gallop on the NBA court like LeBron and Kobe. But at the very least, you can buy a pair of signature shoes from a big-name star and take to the field. What are the stories of the players and shoes in the NBA? For example, who buys them shoes, who decides which shoes to wear before the game, how to maintain the shoes after they are wor, as some fans speculate, a pair of sneakers is only worn for one game, and money is so capricious?

One of the first concepts to mention is the equipment manager. Every NBA team has such a position. His duties are simple: before the start of each game, prepare the jerseys, boots, socks, protective gear, and even towels that are waved on the sidelines during the game, as well as ordinary or specially blended drinks to quench thirst and replenish energy; After the race, the equipment that needs to be washed is washed, dried, and waiting for the next race. There are 82 games in a season, and even every time a player trains, he needs to be in the dressing room in time for the players to have any unforeseen needs.

The Houston Rockets' equipment manager, named Anthony Neera, will always have at least six pairs of light-colored home shoes and six dark-colored away shoes for each player in the months of the game, for a total of twelve pairs of shoes. "That's still the basic number," says Nela, "and some players have special shoe habits, so I have to prepare more shoes. ”

Where do all these sneakers come from? If there is a sponsorship contract, such as LeBron, Curry, and Durant, their shoes will be provided directly to the players by the sponsor, and the players will take out some of them for the equipment manager to spare, sometimes they will bring their own special sneakers to the locker room, and sometimes they will tell the equipment manager in advance which shoes they want to wear tonight, and the equipment manager will have enough time to prepare.

If there is no sponsorship contract, someone from the sneaker company will come to measure the relevant data, and then the player can make a request for which collection he wants to wear, or whose signature shoes he wants. Of course, these shoes have to be paid for by the players out of their own pockets. Before the players wear the shoes themselves, they will be tried on several times in advance to ensure that the shoes are as comfortable as possible, and if the players still feel uncomfortable after trying them on the spot, they will choose to change to another pair of shoes until they are satisfied.

In general, the average NBA player has a shoe lifespan of several games, some are 3 or 4 games, some are 6 or 7 games, and very few players insist on wearing a pair of shoes for more than 10 games. According to sponsor statistics, Mavericks starting point guard Ellis wore a total of 25 pairs of Jordan shoes in the 13-14 season, and the average pair was changed between 3 and 4 games.

After all, basketball is an extremely competitive sport, and players have a lot of stops and turns on the court, and if a pair of shoes are worn for too long, it is inevitable that there will be accidents. In a regular season game in the 13-14 season, 76ers player Rotten stepped directly through the sole of his shoe due to excessive force during the break, and the same accident happened to Spurs player Ginobili and Warriors player Boggart.

Ginobili did not answer reporters' questions about the sneakers after the game in order to protect the interests of the sponsors that day. But judging from the live video, the shoes worn by Ginobili are a style produced a few years ago, and they have been left in the warehouse for several years, and it is normal for the material to have problems with aging. This may be a player's special preference for a certain type of sneaker, but the sneaker is updated too quickly, as long as the sneaker company stops a production line, whether it is a commercial version or a player's version of the related style of sneakers, the rest is only inventory and collection.

It is said that after Roten stepped on the sneakers, his agent also received a phone call from the owner of the sponsoring company to apologize, but in the end, the incident turned out to be a media oolong, and Roten, who likes to collect sneakers, joked: "This will be the most special pair of shoes in my collection." ”

In addition to protecting the players, the boots are also responsible to the sponsor on the field. Therefore, big-name stars such as LeBron and Durant will change their shoes in one or two games to ensure the exposure of sponsors' products and bring more sales of related shoes.

Even more exaggerated has to be the "God of Basketball" Jordan. IT HAS BEEN RUMORED THAT DURING THE SECOND TRIPLE CHAMPIONSHIP, JORDAN HAD A CRAZY MOVE TO CHANGE HIS SHOES AT HALF TIME AND EVEN EVERY QUARTER OF THE GAME, THE MAIN PURPOSE OF WHICH WAS TO INCREASE THE EXPOSURE OF THE AIRJORDAN SERIES. Coincidentally, the AIRJORDAN12 launched in 1996 was the first Jordan shoe to be released in Chinese mainland, so in the eyes of many domestic sneaker enthusiasts, this shoe has a more special status.

Another player in the NBA who has a peculiar penchant for sneakers is "The General" Arenas. After all, he was a rookie when he first entered the league, and Arenas didn't get much attention, so he chose another way to attract attention. Arenas has been on the field many times that season in low-top running shoes. The reason is that he has become the top name of the Wizards, and he can be regarded as a top outside player with a gorgeous style and can sell shoes, but there is no sneaker sponsor to come to the door, and he has to pay for shoes himself.

In the first two years of joining Adidas, Arenas still did not have his own signature shoes, and the angry "Agent 0" could not only wear running shoes, but even board shoes. This farce didn't come to an end until Adidas pushed it to the top position and played the famous "0 story" advertisement. After terminating his contract with Adidas a few years later, Arenas began his solo performance of wearing shoes on the court again.

There are also some players who don't like to wear the signature shoes of players in the same position, "White Chocolate" Williams and "Old Fish" Fisher both have a special preference for the large shoes of interior players, and Webber, the interior core of the Kings in his prime, has long worn Iverson's signature point guard shoes. The most popular among NBA players is Jordan shoes, and even Wang Zhizhi, a Chinese player who played in the NBA for a short time, and some superstitious players in BA even firmly believe that Jordan shoes are magical.

As mentioned earlier, Jordan sometimes changes his shoes every quarter, in addition to advertising his main series of sneakers, he himself has extremely high requirements for sneakers. Once the state is sluggish in one quarter of the game, or the foot is broken, or even just not feeling comfortable, he will change the style of sneakers in the next quarter, or change the color of the same shoe, and the magic is that such a move can generally be exchanged for Jordan's state improvement. When fans watch him play, they will also be unconsciously attracted by Jordan's changing shoes, coupled with the change in his state, the so-called "Jordan shoes have magic" The more they pass through the gods, and more and more players believe in it.

After a pair of sneakers has finished its mission, it will be collected by the equipment manager, and NBA teams also have a regular "sneaker cleaning day", where players take out shoes they will no longer wear, and hold charity sales, donations and other activities together with the replaced sneakers, and the proceeds from the charity sale are used for charity. In similar events, where custom shoes from some of the biggest names are still an exception, Garnett has handed his shoes back to a sponsoring company to help them study the wear and tear data and design a new custom shoe that is better suited to his games.

There are also some players who will sign their shoes directly after the game and give them to the fans who are there to watch the game. At this time, most of them will have a strange move: first pull out the insoles in the shoes. Don't underestimate this thin layer of insole, in the eyes of many NBA players, the value of insoles is far higher than that of sneakers. After a game, it is common for players to take off their shoes and throw them around in the locker room, but the insoles should be pulled out separately and put in the locker for safekeeping.

The price of these insoles is generally in the hundreds, and some can even reach thousands of dollars. They not only further enhance the cushioning effect of the shoe, but also embed special materials according to the different anatomies of the player's left and right feet, injury hazards, to distribute the pressure on the feet during intense exercise, and they can also reduce the risk of injuries to the player's ankles, knees, hips, and even the spine. So the boots can be changed at will, the insoles are not easy to change, as long as a player customizes a similar corrective insole, it will accompany them for almost their entire career.

This technology has only appeared in recent years, and Yao Ming and Maddie did not enjoy similar high-tech back then. Yao Ming suffered numerous injuries late in his career, and Van Gundy Jr., the team's coach at the time, pointed the finger at shoe sponsor Reebok, a move that not only caused an uproar in the media, but even Yao Ming, who has always made no excuses, said that the shoes were not very comfortable to wear.

Reebok's spokesmen at the time also included Francis, Baron Davis, Iverson and Peja, all of whom were hit by injuries late in their careers. In recent years, Reebok's market share has been decreasing under the siege of major sneaker manufacturers, and it seems that these rumors of "easy to get players injured" are also at work.

In recent seasons, Rose's frequent injuries have also been questioned about his sneakers, but this accusation can never be supported by direct evidence, so the stars still play and the shoes still sell well. In fact, if you take 10,000 steps back, Zhang Dashuai set a miracle of 100 points in a single game, averaging 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game in a single season, and playing a record 48.5 minutes.