Sole Provider: Thirty Years of Nike Basketball

by Robert Scoop Jackson

Designed with Nike's trademark visually gripping graphics, Sole Provider: Thirty Years of NIKE Basketball is a collection of Nike hoop shoes and the subculture that surrounds them. Text by Slam magazine editor-at-large Robert "Scoop" Jackson, Sole Provider gives the inside story of NIKE Basketball - from its inception in 1972 to its incredible success as the basketball brand with over 60% market share.

Featuring anecdotal facts and figures, inside interviews with NBA players, Nike footwear designers, musicians, and other pop-culture notables, Sole Provider showcases the historical context of the game with exclusive images from Nike's archives: posters, print advertisements, commercial stills, behind-the-scenes footage, NBA photos, and never-before-published images. Features spreads that illustrate the development of the most pivotal shoes during this period, as well as interviews with designers and drawings of their prototypes; Features the key shoes and the players associated with them including: The Blazer (George "Iceman" Gervin), The Bruin (Moses Malone), The Air Force I (Michael Ray Richardson), The Air Jordan (Michael Jordan), The Alpha Force (Charles Barkley), and many more. Features never-before-published images - as well as insights - from the Nike archives of iconic NBA players including Moses Malone, Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Jason Kidd, among others. Features still from famous advertising campaigns by Wieden & Kennedy featuring Nike alumni including Spike Lee, Bugs Bunny, Steve Martin, Godzilla, and Lil' Penny, among others. Index pages provide an at-a-glance look at all the shoes produced. Features a chronological history of the Nike and NBA partnership over three decades. Features the WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association.)

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Fashion

244 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Tamas O'Doughda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom kindly gifted me this book in high school. I was obsessed with basketball, playing hours on the daily, watching hours of NBA and college ball, and a little bit of a "head" myself, owning 4 pairs of Jordans, 7+ colorways of Air Force 1s, Air Zoom Flights, Dunks, Air Max CB2, and countless other b-ball shoes by the end of my middle and high school career. I even dreamed of being a shoe designer, sketching prototypes in my sketchbook or doodling them on assignments when bored in class.

So, upon creating a GR account, I marked Sole Provider 5 stars. 'Cause in my memory I'm like, I love this book! Well, more like, I loved the design and glancing through the index. I'm a sucker for nicely organized aesthetics and categorization. I'm sure I read through some of the text, but my love for this book was all about the visuals.

Now, having actually read through the text of the book, I can confirm, this book is all about the visuals. The paragraphs accompanying the shoe images start off strong enough at the beginning, offering some insight into the origins of shoe and basketball culture. But after a while, the paragraphs start ranging from annoyingly amusing, to just straight annoying, to self-congratulatory mythologizing, to irrelevant, or most egregiously--blasphemously wrong! (check the completely wrong blurb around the Jordan XIII, which the author says came out in 1998 after Jordan retired, when every casual knows that Jordan played NBA games in XIVs, go watch the iconic shot against the Jazz! And then the index at the end of the book indeed confirms that the Jordan XIII came out in 1997, not 1998. Publishing incorrect content in a book about time and the evolution of Nike basketball shoes is a ridiculous error that undercuts the quality of the book).

But man, the book is still a visual feast for any sneakerhead. The layouts are beautiful. The old ads and print material are a cool walk down memory lane. The sketches are beautiful and inspiring. I wish I had a ginormous closet and 100 pairs of Nikes right now! And that index...wooo, it's still seductively gorgeous to those of us who love an orderly collection.

So, yeah, I love this book to look at, but I think it could've been better with a different style of text accompanying. Not dry and plain. But a little more insight into the designers' decisions and maybe some interviews, to balance with the high-stylized and sometimes irrelevant filler.

[Nasser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the sneaker company Nike and how they have been very sucessful with the the basketball shoes they make for the sport of basketball. Nike makes sneakers for other sports like running, tennis,football and others but they really out due themsleves with the sport of basketball. Nike has mainly focused on making sneakers for basketball in the 80s and 90s and in the present day they have really improved the technology and materials they use for those nike basketball sneakers. I really enjoyed this book because i have been wearing nikes for a long time and its good to see the history. But in my point of view i think majority of the sneakers they made back in the day were better but in the persent day there are so many good kicks to perform basketball very well.

[Chris Keninger · Rating 5 out of 5]

the history of nike basketball told through a chronology of sneakers - this book made me a sneakerhead - it catalogues the basketball sneakers from 1970-to the Air Jordan XIII perfectly in an index as well - great photos, artist sketches, and old advertisements; overall good graphic layout

[Robert]

Any sneaker-head should have this book in his collection. It talks about every iconic Nike Basketball shoe...from the Nike Blazer all the way up to Jordan XVIII.