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photo: GETTY IMAGES (AIR JORDAN SHOES) OVERVIEW Hightop basketball shoes peaked about eight years ago and have been losing ground ever since. One reason is that some research suggests that hightop shoes aren’t effective at preventing foot injuries, the most common type of injury in the NBA The decline of hightops marks the end of an era that saw basketball sneakers become a highly competitive fashion business LINKS:
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Low Point for Hightops
By DAVID BIDERMAN After playing his whole career in bulky hightop and midtop shoes, the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant asked Nike to make him low tops for the start of last season. He thought they’d help him move around better. Soon after he started wearing them, teammates Lamar Odom, Luke Walton, Shannon Brown and Josh Powell switched too. And the Lakers have won the last two NBA titles. Could it be the shoes? END OF AN ERA While the NBA doesn’t release any data on what its players wear on their feet from day to day, players, team officials and shoe companies say hightops peaked about eight years ago and have been losing ground ever since. Podiatrist Richard Hofacker, who’s worked with the Cleveland Cavaliers since the late 1980s, says that back then, 80% of players preferred the bulkier sneakers. Now, he says, the majority like them low. At their highest point, according to market-research firm NPD Group, hightops accounted for about 20% of the U.S. market for basketball shoes. Today, that number has sunk to about 8% while lowtops—the kind that Mr. Bryant wears—have grown to 29% of the market from just 11% in 2002. Steve Nash, the Phoenix Suns guard, says he has always preferred lowtops, probably because he grew up playing soccer in low-cut cleats. On the rare occasions when he’s worn hightops on the court, he was not impressed. “I just felt less mobile,” he says. The decline of hightops marks the end of a certain era in footwear—an era when basketball shoes took hold of American popular culture. After the launch of the 1985 Air Jordans caused pandemonium in malls all over, shoe companies began battling one another by putting air pumps in the tongues of their shoes, attaching flashing lights to the bottoms and making elaborate commercials. “All of a sudden it became a fashion business,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst with NPD. “The Jordans were transcendent. The market went from being virtually zilch to a million-dollar business overnight, and nobody thought it would go back down.” One of the reasons hightops are going out of vogue, players and injury experts say, is that some research suggests that they aren’t very good at protecting your feet from injuries. NBA players missed 64% more games last season because of foot-related injuries than they did 20 years ago, according to NBA statistician Harvey Pollack. Foot-related injuries are the most common type in the league, he says, and they’re growing faster than the other common causes of missed games in the NBA, such as back issues and the flu. The average cost per NBA team in missed games due to foot-related injuries last season was “It’s a big issue,” says Greg Campbell, the Memphis Grizzlies’ president of business operations. “As a team, you have to do whatever you can to keep your players on the court.” Craig Richards, a researcher at Australia’s University of Newcastle, published a 2008 article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that cataloged academic studies in athletics and found no evidence that specialized sneakers limited injuries. His research actually found that hightop sneakers make players run slower and jump lower. Dr. Richards says he thinks the root of the problem is commerce. “These shoe makers are good at selling shoes—science, not so much.” Chris Webber, a five-time NBA All-Star forward who played for more than 14 seasons, says even “with the best hightops, I’ve still broken my ankle.” OPEN-AIR JORDANS? Big basketball sneakers aren’t necessarily to blame for poor foot health, of course. Players have gotten taller and heavier, the pace of the game is faster and the NBA postseason has gotten longer. Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer says he actually switched to bigger shoes as he got older. An NBA spokesman says there’s no evidence that particular styles of shoes do anything to alter performance. A spokesman for Adidas said the company does a lot of testing on its shoes to improve safety and quality. A Nike spokesman said the company values innovation, but learning the science behind foot health is “a new educat-ion process.” Sacramento Kings president of basketball operations Geoff Petrie, one of the first NBA players to switch to Nike shoes from Converse, says trends in the NBA are simple—if a star does something, other players will follow. “If they started wearing sandals,” he says, “so would everyone else.” photo: GETTY IMAGES (AIR JORDAN SHOES)
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