Why do players buy Kobe’s shoes?

ON A QUIET NIGHT several weeks ago before the start of the regular season, Wilson Taylor was inside the utility room of the Paycom Center, which doubles as the Oklahoma City Thunder’s sports equipment manager’s warehouse. On a shelf against the wall, he ran his hands over a layer of dust on a cluster of black and gold Nike shoe boxes. Kobe 8 System TB, size 13.5.

He smiled, knowing the importance of what he had uncovered. He pulled out his phone, snapped a photo and texted it to Thunder rookie point guard Josh Giddey.

“I don’t believe you!” replied Giddey. “Can I come in right now?”

Fifteen minutes later Giddey was in the building, opened the five pairs of orange-and-white Thunder-colored Kobes that had originally been sent for Derek Fisher, who finished his playing career with the Thunder in the 2013-14 season and had previously been a longtime teammate Kobe Bryant. Giddey, holding them like a kid at Christmas, looked at Taylor and said, “Can I have them all?”

For years, this would perhaps have seemed an unusual request. In the world of celebrity excess and fashion that is the NBA, sneakers are usually ubiquitous. They’re always original, they’re always everywhere and they’re typically free.

Until now.

Last spring, Nike and Vanessa Bryant announced they were severing their ties after the sneaker giant’s deal with the late Kobe Bryant came to an end. The parties are still negotiating in hopes that they can eventually come to an agreement, sources told ESPN, but currently the partnership is over. They had already had production delays that prevented players from receiving their normal stock during the 2020-21 season, and for now, no more Kobes are being produced.

Suddenly, the most popular shoe among NBA players is also the hardest to get.

“If you don’t already have them,” says Portland Trail Blazers forward Larry Nance, “you’re not going to get them.”

Kobe Bryant’s NIKE SHOE LINE has undoubtedly become the most popular athletic shoe for NBA players in recent years. During the 2019-20 season, more than 100 players were wearing the Kobe 4 Protro, a retro re-issue of a shoe Bryant originally wore in 2008. Today’s players love the design, how it feels and what the Kobes mean.

“This generation looks at Kobe as our Jordan,” says Chicago Bulls shooting guard DeMar DeRozan, known around the league as the dean of Kobe shoe devotees. “It’s a great shoe to put on. Guys really fell in love with it.”

On the Orlando bubble in 2020, just months after Bryant’s tragic death, nearly a third of the 330 or so players were wearing a version of the shoe from Kobe’s line, and that number was growing. In the past two years, a number of players who had previously been with Under Armour and Adidas did not see their shoe advertising contracts renewed, a trend that was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the tennis free agents sought out the Kobes. It all boils down to a large contingent that now has a supply problem for their Kobe needs.

There are still supplies for sale at some retailers, but not in large numbers in the sizes NBA players typically need. The shortage of the larger sizes has driven a price boom on secondary athletic shoe resale websites such as StockX, GOAT and eBay.

Players wearing a size 14 or larger are looking to spend at least $800 for the most basic models of the Kobes, and that’s not what they typically put on. But players are paying up, and several told ESPN they’ve spent more than five digits buying Kobes supplies on the secondary market since last spring and summer.

“I’m not going to go to a store and find a [size] 17 in a Kobe. Impossible,” says Anthony Davis, who switched to Kobes when he joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 2019. “I mean, it’s the guys’ favorite athletic shoe….. A lot of people are inspired by it and the shoe feels amazing. Everybody feels amazing.”

Players previously wore whatever color they wanted – particularly after the league relaxed its rules around sneakers ahead of the 2018-19 season – and now they’re scouring the internet and trying to hunt down forgotten reserves for sneakers to wear to games. And they’re competing against each other for the larger sizes available on the market.

“If you weren’t involved the last several years,” says DeRozan, a longtime Kobe model enthusiast. “You’re suffering.”

Kobes are now considered “remnants,” bringing them to an antique market that ups the ante. NBA players have been chasing remnant shoes for years, often to add to their collections to wear or display off the court. Miami Heat forward P.J. Tucker has been known to wear high-top vintage models to games, but he’s a case apart.

It’s also not unheard of for players to occasionally buy sneakers to wear to games. Taylor says he would sometimes help players like former Thunder center Steven Adams, who wears a size 19 and really liked the fit of Derrick Rose’s older Adidas models, spend several hundred dollars to find additional pairs. More commonly around the league, players wear what they are paid to wear and almost never think about supplying.

The current situation around the Kobes is a whole new ballgame, even for players who are paid to wear Nike shoes. Giddey, who signed a multi-year contract with Nike before the season, and players like him are spending more than $1,500 on pairs of Kobes right now as they try to stock up for this season and beyond. Their agents are sniffing around for them, calling in favors and hunting the secondary market for their clients but without much success.

“A few guys have contacted me asking for help,” says Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker. “You’ll never run out of Kobes.”

Booker and DeRozan have a supply of PEs, short for Player Exclusives, with which Nike has established them as brand ambassadors for years. But they are in an elite class. The shortage is particularly felt by young players who love Bryant and his sneaker line but haven’t had the benefit of being in the league long enough to create a backlog of orders.

“I’m working on it every day,” says New Orleans Pelicans rookie ,Trey Murphy, who donned a pair of Kobes given to him by a teammate to start the season. “It’s complicated out there right now. I’m not DeMar DeRozan.”

But even DeRozan can’t be DeRozan.

“I used to play in a pair once or twice and then I’d give my shoes away to the fans,” DeRozan says. “Maybe I can’t do that as much anymore.”

RUMORS OF THE end of the Bryant family’s deal with Nike began circulating last season before becoming official in April. Nike representatives quietly told sports equipment chiefs to get their Kobe guys ready for the end.

“Some of us they let us know and we started racking them up,” says Phoenix Suns small forward Jae Crowder. “By the time the news came out, I had saved enough for about two years.”

Stars with big shoe contracts like LeBron James, who has given molds of his feet to Nike so the shoes in his line will feel soft when he puts them on for the first time, put on a fresh pair every game. Some players will wear them for a couple of games. Crowder says his two-year supply was 100 pairs, as he wears about 50 in a year. Davis, on the other hand, wears fewer, as he says he wears about 20-25 pairs from his shallow Kobe supply this season.

Some players without an almost equally deep supply have already been forced to switch. A few Sports equipment chiefs say players have switched to the stout Nike Kyrie Irving Low model, which has design similarities to the Kobe model, this season. Others are using Nike’s more generic new line, the GT. But many proprietary sneaker lines have been delayed as Nike and other shoe retailers have had to deal with factory closures in Asia due to COVID-19.

Meanwhile, players who still have the Kobes are trying to get the most out of each box.

“The guys I have who wear the Kobes wear them until they’re about to fall apart,” says one equipment manager.

In discussing this situation with ESPN, players repeatedly expressed hopes that Nike and Bryant’s estate could work out a new deal, a topic of discussion that has dominated among sneakerheads this fall. But even if that were to happen, it would be a long time before the Kobes would be available again – to players or anyone else. Product lines typically take Nike 12-16 months to produce, according to sources, and that was before the pandemic disrupted global supply chains.

Either way, as this season progresses and remaining Kobes supplies begin to dwindle without replacements, demand for the late Hall of Famer’s beloved shoe design will only increase. At a time when some players are dabbling in cryptocurrency investments, a new exchange could emerge as more players become desperate.

“I’ve always had so many pairs, but I’m looking at them differently now. Guys are asking me [for them], but I can’t tear them apart like I used to,” DeRozan says. “If it gets worse, I might even have to resort to my secret safe.”