What They’re Wearing – Early Season Offerings
Obviously 2-2 was not what we expected after the first four games, but the basketball is still pretty good in Philly. Is it perfect? No, but no team wants to peak in October. Let’s hope the same can be said about the sneaker choices of the players on this team. While players around the league are pushing the limits with color and style, this 76ers team continues to underwhelm with their lackluster footwear.
Sixers Notes
Markelle Fultz
Fultz is known to wear sneakers from the Nike LeBron line. He’s worn the Nike LeBron 16 for the first three games of the season, but he pulled out an all red version of the Nike LeBron Soldier XI when playing the Pistons on Tuesday night.
Amir Johnson
After I had noted last week about Amir Johnson opting for the Air Jordan 32 against Boston on Opening Night, he’s worn Nike Kyrie 4 for the past three games. This is the kind of investigative journalism that you will only get at The Phifth Quarter. Check back in after we play the Celts again on Christmas Day.
Landry Shamet
Congratulations to Landry Shamet on the first start of his career on Tuesday in Detroit. He continues to wear the Nike Air Zoom Huarache 2k4. This was a state of the art sneaker, with advanced cushioning in 2004, but in 2018 the tech is pretty outdated. I thought it was just a novelty for Opening Night, but I guess they’re here to stay. Shamet had surgery for fractures in both feet in college, so I would think he would want to wear the most supportive sneaker possible. As I wrote in the past, most guys around the league wear orthotics of some sort, but it strikes me as odd that he’d be wearing a sneaker that was originally released when he was in first grade. They were re-released in 2016, but with no advancement in the cushioning technology. They were widely available in Marshall’s stores throughout the Delaware Valley. Do you, Landry, but let’s hope your foot issues don’t resurface.
Mike Muscala
This doesn’t have anything to do with his sneakers – he’s wearing standard issue white and blue Nike Hyperdunk X. Admittedly I don’t have any recollection of watching him play in his career prior to his first game this season with the Sixers. I was completely unaware of one of the goofiest tattoos in the league. If the NBA is making Lonzo cover his BBB tattoo and JR can’t show off his Supreme leg work, then why can Moose give free advertising to Nintendo?
Notes from the opponents
Chicago Bulls
Nothing but white, black, and red from the Bulls. Nothing much of note out of them. They may be more boring than us.
Orlando Magic
The narrow win against the Magic doesn’t look as bad now after what they did against Boston as it did at the time. The Magic brought a little bit more flare to the proceedings than Chicago did earlier in the week.
Mo Bamba signed a contract last week joining Joel Embiid with Under Armour. He wore an all gray version of the UA HOVR Havoc Low.
The most interesting note from the Magic comes from Evan Fournier. For at least a portion of the game, he was wearing the Fila Spaghetti (Stackhouse 1) Low. He changed into the Nike Hyperdunk X at some point, but this has to be the first time a Fila sneaker was worn on court in a NBA game since Jerry Stackhouse played for the Nets in 2012.
Detroit Pistons
This game was an early season classic. It unfortunately did not go our way after a throwback game from Blake Griffin. In the timeless words of Alaa Abdelnaby, “Where’s the help? How does he get all the way to the basket unmolested?”
None of the major players for the Pistons contributed to the sneaker discussion outside of Andre Drummond was wearing a pair of Jordan X , but some of their role players had some interesting footwear choices.
Glenn Robinson III has a sneaker contract with Chinese brand Li-Ning. He stepped out tonight in a gray and blue version of the Way of Wade 6.
St. Joe’s product Langston Galloway was wearing a pink sneaker for the game with the characters from Fairly OddParents painted on them. I had a hard time figuring out what brand and model the sneaker was. After doing some research, it seems that he is signed to a brand that I personally have never heard of before – Q4. He wears his signature model, the Q4 LG9-II. Can’t fault the guy for getting his money, but they’re fairly odd sneakers.
Next three are against the Bucks, Hornets (Team Jordan), and Hawks. Stay tuned.
