My Feet Are Large, But Not as Large as Matt Bettencourt's
I have large feet by most standards, and it's pretty difficult to find size 13 shoes that fit all of the following criteria:
1) Reasonably inexpensive - less that 65 bucks for running shoes, with another Jackson thrown in for a good pair of baksetball shoes
2) The right brand - I would love it if I could buy a pair of Spaldings (and so would Hakeem), but I've worn cheap basketball shoes before and they literally start falling apart after a few months.*
3) Not extremely ugly - Sure, I could buy this sweet pair, or even this one. They might be illegal though.
So I went ahead and tried on a pair of "Nike Air Zoom Huarache Elite TB" shoes (that's quite a catchy name) at the store and they were way too comfortable, so I went home and ordered the color that I wanted online for 99 bucks. That base price edges out my 1991 Jordans and a pair of brown dress shoes my parents bought me in 2003 for the record of "Most Money Paid for a Pair of My Shoes."
I have paid 110 dollars for socks though.
*By the way, I would love to have a conversation with anyone about Nike's labor practices and price-gouging; I wouldn't buy a pair of their shoes if I felt that their business practices were wrong, and maybe I'm actually turning a blind eye here. Let me know if you think that's the case. I'd love to hear your opinion on this.
Labels: basketball, shoes
posted by Andrew @ 4:57 PM
2 Comments:
It's a tough choice, isn't it?
I look at it kind of like this: when you're born you're a raindrop...you fall into a channel in the dirt that was already there, formed by other rain drops. Just by virtue of the structure of the channel, your options for movement are pretty limited. You have some play here or there, but ultimately you're going to follow the path of the channel in the dirt.
So for the shoes question, sometimes you don't have much choice, most of these shoes are made in foreign nations that pay people nothing and have them work in awful conditions.
What you can do, though, is be aware of this fact. If you're aware of this, and should you hear of any specific story or info that Nike or some other brand is doing something you don't agree with, then you can not buy the shoes. Until then, what choice do we have?
I don't know...sometimes I feel that if there are no "good enough" options besides Nike, Adidas, Converse, etc, we should go with the XJ900s and give up the opportunity to have solidly made bball shoes. But other times I think to myself that I don't want to tear my ACL, but that's probably just making excuses anyway.
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