By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

THERE is a common perception that women are crazy about shoes, but guys are just as capable of filling closets with footwear. But instead of the formal and party footwear so beloved by women, guys have a tendency to accumulate voluminous assemblages of athletic footwear—in particular, basketball shoes. A lot of basketball shoes.

Collectors are proud of their finds, with the complete pristine selection of Air Jordans as the sign of true accomplishment, a feat that can be beat perhaps by only one other thing: A collection of original Nike Air Force Ones in all the available colorways and special editions. In other words, mission impossible.

Still, there really does seem to be a gene in Filipino guys which makes them swoon over basketball shoes (sometimes known as high tops except that they aren’t, you know, high anymore). At the beginning, from the arrival of the classic (and still very collectible) Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars (more commonly and affectionately known as Chucks), basketball shoes were usually “high-cut”: good exemplars would be the iconic Adidas Pro Model, the Converse Weapon and the aforementioned Air Force One. The 1990s saw the rise of the “mid-cut” shoe and recently we have seen more evidence of actually “low-cut” basketball shoes being worn on the court; the most famous low-cut hoop shoe would probably be the Puma Clyde, a wonderful confection of suede and rubber worn by the iconoclast Clyde Frazier of the New York Knicks.

The arms race in hoop footgear has been going on since the 1980s primarily by the two superpowers: Nike and Adidas. There are many brands which have come and gone and come and gone again on the court, such as Spalding, Fila, Oakley, Brooks, Avia, LA Gear, Etonic, British Knights and so on. The fierce rise of Reebok gave the superpowers pause in the 1990s, but Reebok is now essentially part of the Adidas arsenal.

But back to Nike and Adidas: today, these two wage a war over players (Nike: Kobe and Lebron vs Adidas: Garnett and McGrady) through a long line of technology (for example, Nike Shox vs Adidas Bounce). It’s a fascinating tug-of-war with cool results such as the Nike Foamposite Lites worn by Knick Nate Robinson in the Sprite Slam Dunk final versus Dwight Howard’s Adidas TS Bounce Commanders.

As for the view closer to home, we remember the days of the mighty Grosby basketball empire followed by the Kaypee enterprise. Today, only one local company is still working to get Filipino athletic footwear on Filipino feet, and that’s Accel, which notably has signature shoes for Jay Jay Helterbrand and Mark Caguioa. It may be an uphill battle but Accel has been nobly climbing with very colorful results.

Athletic shoes often breed loyalists—there really are Nike guys, for example. Perhaps the shrewdest move by Nike was to sign up the Alpha Pinoy. Today, Manny Pacquiao is a Nike guy and in a way, maybe that means all of us are too—to a certain degree. Or not.

Read about Nike and Tweetie de Leon-Gonzalez in the Febraury 22, 2009 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.