When Tom Siegfried was a basketball player at Alliance High School in the early 1990s, he could drive to his local Foot Locker and buy a pair of Nike Air Command Force basketball shoes.
The shoes, which were worn by San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson (not to mention Wesley Snipes in “White Men Can’t Jump), featured Nike’s version of the Reebok Pump. It had an inflatable bladder in the ankle, allowing players to adjust the shoe’s tightness around the ankle.
The good: the shoes were extremely stable and had a cool visible air pocket in the heel, which was relatively new.
The bad: they weighed roughly 34 pounds and the tongue came past your knee.
If you weren’t 7-feet tall with an action figure’s physique, there were plenty of other shoe options, from the Reebok Pump (worn by Dominique Wilkins, among others) to the Air Force Max (worn by Charles Barkley in the NBA and Chris Webber at Michigan during the infamous “Timeout Game”) to the Converse Aero Jam (Larry Johnson) to several varieties of Air Jordans.
Thing was, they were all mid-tops or high-tops.
“So, I’m old,” said Siegfried, now the boys basketball coach at Louisville. “And when I played at Alliance with Chet Harper and for Coach (Rick) Hairston, we always had high-tops.
“I joke with my players that they came up to our calf.”
Not anymore. If you’ve attended any high school basketball games over the past few years, you may have noticed that uniforms aren’t the only things that have gotten smaller since the 1990s.
Shoes have, too.
“Every year we give them a choice and it’s always low-top,” Siegfried said. “Nowadays, the kids train so much and have so much strength and mobility in their ankles, it doesn’t really phase them. They like the low-top because it gives them a lot more freedom.
“Like I said, I’m old. We wore high-tops, but we used to jump stop and pivot back then, too. It’s a lot cleaner of a game now.”
Decades ago, it wasn’t unusual to see basketball players in low-tops. While most players wore high-top Chuck Taylors (Converse All-Stars) or Keds, Celtics center Bill Russell wore low-top Chucks, as well as low-top Adidas. But by the late 1970s, pretty much everyone wore high-tops, ostensibly for the ankle support.
That didn’t change until 2008, when Kobe Bryant decided he wanted a faster, quicker shoe than what was available. Bryant grew up in Italy and noticed that, aside from jumping, soccer players do pretty much the same things that basketball players do. And soccer players weren’t wearing mid-top cleats.
So, Nike designed the Zoom Kobe IV, starting a low-top trend that now dominates the NBA and has trickled down to the high school level. If you look around the NBA, you’ll see signature low-tops from normal-sized guards like Paul George or James Harden to nimble giraffes like Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo. LeBron James wears a mid-top that looks like a moon boot compared to Kobe’s shoes, but even his shoes have a low-top version.
“I let kids wear whatever is comfortable, but you’re definitely seeing a trend to the lower shoe,” Hoover boys coach Mike Bluey said. “With the ankle braces improving so much, they wear those and it’s just like they’re wearing the high-top.”
A lot of coaches are like Bluey, giving players the option to pick what they want as long as it fits the team’s color scheme.
Lake coach Tom McBride admits he’s one of those old-school coaches who likes his players to wear uniform shoes, but he doesn’t dictate what kind of shoes. Consequently, all but two of this year’s Blue Streaks wore the Nike Mamba Focus, which is a Kobe Bryant signature shoe that looks almost like a running shoe. (GlenOak’s girls basketball team, which won a district title on Friday, wears a gray version of the Mamba.)
“We bring our (shoe) guy in in October and then we decide what to do as a team,” said McBride, who coaches in a pair of blue Nike Zoom Pegasus 36 running shoes, in case you were wondering. “Nike’s best package in blue was the low-top.
“Even in practice, when we don’t wear team shoes, a lot of them do wear the low-tops. It’s kind of back in and it’s probably the NBA trickling down for sure. Studies say there’s no correlation between the low and the high as far as ankle injuries. That’s what the reports are telling us, unless that’s a marketing technique.”
It isn’t. I worked at Dick’s Sporting Goods in the late 1990s and we were told the same thing. In 2014, the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research even did a study on the relationship between high-top and low-top basketball shoes and found no difference.
"There's no science out there, that we have at least, that proves that a high-top shoe is more effective at reducing ankle injuries than anything else," Kevin Dodson, Nike's senior design director for basketball footwear, told Esquire in 2017.
Why is that? Well, in order to truly stabilize the ankle, a basketball shoe would basically need to be like a work boot, restricting movement to the point where you’d look like Frankenstein’s monster compared to the rest of the players on the court. (If you already look like this on a basketball court, by all means, wear whatever you’d like.)
Nike makes dozens of types of basketball shoes each year, so the choice ultimately comes down to preference.
But the low-top trend isn’t going away, particularly in the younger generation.
“I don’t dictate that kind of stuff; if that’s what they want to wear, let them do it,” GlenOak girls basketball coach Paul Wackerly said. “I had those (high-tops) in high school and trust me, I didn’t like them.”
“If they want to wear low-tops, I say get ‘em.”
Lake’s Owens earns first Division I offer
Lake running back Dreden Owens picked up his first Division I offer this week, from Youngstown State. Owens carried 141 times for 1,031 yards (7.3 average) and 10 TDs in eight games for the Blue Streaks last fall as a junior.
The Penguins compete at the Football Championship Subdivision level (formerly I-AA). YSU recently hired former Salem High School football coach Doug Phillips to replace Bo Pelini, who will be LSU’s defensive coordinator.
Around college basketball
Winthrop guard Chandler Vaudrin (Lake) dished out a season-high 15 assists to go with eight points and eight rebounds in Saturday’s 84-76 win over High Point. He averaged 9.3 points, 5.8 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game during the regular season for the Eagles (21-10, 15-3), who tied Radford atop the Big South standings. The Big South tournament begins Tuesday. ... Maryland sophom*ore guard Taylor Mikesell (Jackson) is averaging 10.6 points and shooting 41.7% on 3-pointers for the Terps (24-4, 15-2), who have won 13 straight entering Sunday’s regular-season finale at Minnesota. Maryland is a half-game behind Northwestern (26-3, 16-2) in the conference standings. The Big Ten tournament begins Wednesday in Indianapolis.
Malone’s Hazen headlines benefit
Legendary Malone University cross country coach Jack Hazen will speak at a ministry fundraising event at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Chapel in North Canton.
Hazen will speak on the lifelong benefits of running and aerobic activity from a physical, mental, and spiritual perspective. He will also share stories on his successful coaching career, including his experience as the USA long distance men’s running coach at the 2012 Olympics.
Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for students, with all proceeds going to support the running team at the Deep Stream School in Buena Vista, Guatemala.
For details, visit DeepStreamCommunity.com.
Former Kent golf coach to speak
Herb Page, the longtime Kent State golf coach who retired last spring, will speak at Monday’s Hall of Fame Luncheon Club meeting at Tozzi’s on 12th.
Reach Joe at 330-580-8573 or
joe.scalzo@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @jscalzoREP
