and this album deserves a 33 1/3 book—hmmmmmm

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsJn...

and some of the on-court stuff UA did for him is genuinely good! like "flow" is just a matter of sole compound but it's great.

the black album has some great riffs but lord that album is dumb

oh yeah I revisit '83-89 a lot, after that, eh whatever for the most part

the curry 1 was one of the 15 sneakers I wrote about in my book!

and maybe it does but again it had nothing to do with currys and everything to do with retro/lifestyle sneakers being the lead and UA having none of either, like name one good lebron since the 10

oh yeah, I wrote an entire book about this stuff

bsky.app/profile/russ...

the best thing kids can do when an adult tries to force their nostalgia on the next generation is say "ok boomer" and wear whatever *they* think is cool

there is a huge part of this where I think people between 40-55 or thereabouts insisting on being the arbiters of cool forever because they/we were kids when the first air jordan run happened has absolutely ruined whatever sneaker culture was left

it's a whole separate thread, but to me "culture" needs to be bottom-up, not top-down. "culture" is not something a brand sells you, rather something you find and make your own. by that metric, I think the curry line did just fine, and I am curious to see where it goes next.

-30-

I don't care about resale value, or instant sellouts of carefully allocated limited runs whose entire raison d'etre is to sell out immediately. the cool thing about currys was that if kids wanted them, they could find them at retail.

and by "paid off" I mean it made UA a legit player in the performance hoop market. I don't care that they didn't resonate with the 40-plus year old sneaker nerds who think the sun rises and sets on tinker hatfield designs from the '80s and '90s. to me that's not "culture," that's stamp collecting.

was what they were paying steph worth it? maybe not if you try and just balance it off curry shoe sales, but if you go that route I don't know whether *anyone* save jordan is actually earning their money. UA's gamble was that kids would want the shoe of their favorite player and it paid off.

at under armour, steph didn't have that cushion. under armour didn't have retro to fall back on since their sneaker division wasn't that old, they didn't really do much lifestyle since they were actually focused primarily on performance. and despite all that, the curry line thrived.

there were some notable exceptions, mind you, whether it was the south beach lebrons, the kobe IV and V and VI (although even those sat the first time), most recently the first anthony edwards adidas jawn. but those all COULD bomb since adidas and nike were so retro/lifestyle heavy.

now again, at this point signature hoops was already mostly a vanity product, a loss leader set atop a retro-dominated lineup to show consumers and athletes alike that a brand was still focused on innovation or whatever. modern signature hoops wasn't it on the streets, wasn't making top 10 lists

and nike kept signing more signature guys, scooping kobe after he ditched his adidas deal, as well as young guys: kevin durant and, well, steph curry. who, for a variety of reasons, left nike and signed with under armour to be *the* nba guy there (sorry brandon jennings and deandre jordan)