{"id":399419,"date":"2026-01-08T09:13:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399419\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T09:13:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:13:15","slug":"nike-lost-steph-curry-after-a-disastrous-pitch-now-the-nba-star-is-wearing-their-shoes-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399419\/","title":{"rendered":"Nike lost Steph Curry after a disastrous pitch. Now the NBA star is wearing their shoes again \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a breakout 2013 season during which he announced himself as the next big NBA<\/a> star, Stephen Curry\u2019s<\/a> contract with Nike<\/a> was up for renegotiation. The outfit from Oregon dispatched a team to meet with the Golden State Warriors\u2019 point guard and his father Dell at the Oakland Marriott Hotel. Since his college career at Davidson, he\u2019d only ever worn the swoosh so they were kind of pushing an open door. Which might explain what happened next.<\/p>\n

Proceedings began with a Nike honcho mispronouncing as Steph-On the name of somebody who\u2019d recently dropped 54 points on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Worse, he didn\u2019t even bother to correct himself. <\/p>\n

Then the presentation proper started and a slide popped up showing the words Kevin Durant where Curry should have been. The person charged with piecing together the hard sell had regurgitated material previously used to woo Durant and hadn\u2019t bothered to do basic revisions. <\/p>\n

Having already noted the significant absence of Lynn Merritt, the true power broker at Nike basketball<\/a> operations back then, from the table, these petty slights confirmed to the Curry family that Steph was not a priority. He went away and signed for an upstart rival, wore Under Armour<\/a> when winning four NBA titles, and helped them shift nearly a billion dollars\u2019 worth of merchandise bearing his name across the next decade. Nike\u2019s mistake became part of industry lore, trotted out as a cautionary lesson about corporate complacency and arrogance.<\/p>\n

Yet, against the Toronto Raptors the other week, Curry scored 39 points wearing a pair of Nike Kobe 11s, once the signature shoes of the deceased Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant. Previously, he turned up to the Chase Center to take on the Utah Jazz in Nike Air Jordan 12s (famously worn by Michael Jordan in the \u201cFlu Game\u201d), switched into Air Jordan 14s for warm-ups but then played in Nike Sabrina 3s, named for current WNBA superstar Sabrina Ionescu. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Nike Kobe basketball shoes worn by Stephen Curry against Utah Jazz on January 3rd. Photograph: Thearon W Henderson\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The most famous Nike refusenik of all donning three of their pairs in one night caused a media stir and that was entirely the point.<\/p>\n

Last November, Curry was declared a free agent by Under Armour, which, after a decade of spectacular growth, has lately run into serious financial bother. Their troubles are such that they were forced to release the baller so synonymous with the brand he\u2019d been given an ownership share in one of his contracts. <\/p>\n

His reaction to the split has showcased a level of extraordinary business acumen. Rather than merely sit down to negotiate with various, ardent suitors, he has used this NBA season to try on shoes of a different stripe for each game, constantly amplifying speculation about what brand he might eventually opt for and simultaneously educating the rest of us about the absurd nomenclature of these things.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0All bets are off as gambling virus runs rampant through US sportsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

His choices are always pointed, designed to pay homage to players he grew up idolising or to his peers. At the Orlando Magic, he donned throwback Reebok Shaqnosis, made famous in the 1990s by the great Shaquille O\u2019Neal in the first flush of his fame with that club. Another night he turned up in Li-Ning Jimmy Butler 4s, replete with \u201cBatman\u201d colourway, named for a current team-mate, shoes that also happen to be produced by the Chinese newcomers making serious inroads into the market. A pair of pink Puma HALI 1s Hibiscus, endorsed by Tyrese Haliburton, were used in an encounter with the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n

In part, this very public trial and error is such a big deal because we live in an era of American sport where television cameras diligently cover the arrival of athletes into the bowels of stadia. Their journeys from carpark to locker-room are tracked as part of the pre-game build-up. Some players have embraced this by making bold fashion choices, wearing statement pieces for the cameras, turning that short trip into something of a catwalk. Always canny about marketing his wares, Curry has used the nightly spotlight to make intentional footwear choices that inevitably go viral, the hype improving his negotiating hand in an industry that generates $5 billion (\u20ac4.2 billion) a year in revenue.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Puma basketball shoes worn by Stephen Curry against the Houston Rockets on November 26th last year. Photograph: Thearon W Henderson\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I took a couple pictures,\u201d said the Minnesota Timberwolves\u2019 Anthony Edwards, admitting to fanboying after seeing Curry wearing his personal Adidas CLOT x AE 1 Lows last month. \u201cEver since I was with Under Armour, since like eighth grade, I always wore Steph Curry\u2019s. And then going to his camp, a couple years later, getting drafted, and then playing an Olympics with him, then seeing how cool he is and then seeing him wearing my shoes, just like I was a kid again. So, I had to take the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every mall in America has at least one store flogging vintage 1990s basketball shoes for sums north of $300 per pair. Rarer editions are so expensive you could add another zero to the price and all are clad in vinyl so window shoppers can\u2019t besmirch them with greasy paws. This vibrant, slightly bonkers sneaker culture is why a fuss is being made about what a 37-year-old might put on his feet for the waning seasons of his career. His age doesn\u2019t matter because Jordan proved if a player is special enough his brand can endure long after he departs the fray. Curry was never his equal on the court but off it has proved every bit as savvy. Nike learned that the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a breakout 2013 season during which he announced himself as the next big NBA star, Stephen Curry\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,726,590,54961,85,141624,2489],"class_list":["post-399419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-nike","tag-sports","tag-under-armour","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}