Okay, so I've been hatin on Adidas' basketball footwear program for a while now. These recent photos of the TS Commander and TS Creator on the feet of NBA players are definitely doing their best to convince me otherwise... and I gotta say they're not doing a bad job. Those VOTE 08 editions on the feet of Garnett and McGrady are NICE.
Overall, the actual design of these 2 shoes is quite nice, I bet the concept drawings of them were amazing. I can't really comment on the performance, so instead I'll start complaining about some other things like putting Garnett's face on the shoe. Come on guys, that just looks plain tacky. No offense to Garnett of course.. his face is just fine... I just don't think anyone's photographic face should be on a shoe.. not even Jordan.
And how about the marketing... Adidas seems to have 2 ad campaigns going right now: "Impossible is Nothing" and "Basketball is a Brotherhood". The first of course was the slogan that Garnett was mistakingly accused of blurting out after he and the Celtics won the championship last year. He didn't say "Impossible is Nothing", he said "Anything is Possible" which funny enough is Chinese Sneaker brand Li Ning's slogan. ANYWAY, what I want to talk about more is the "Basketball is a Brotherhood" campaign that promotes basketball as a team game rather than an individual/superstar type of game. Where in the world does Tracy McGrady fit in all of this? Yes, basketball is a team game, but people like superstars and the way the NBA game is played, superstars flourish. I think this campaign is best left for the college game. I do like the attempt in Adidas' part in designing only 2 shoes for all the superstars on their roster and eliminating all the previous individual lines.. it's interesting and it does work in a sense.. its like a team shoe.. and not only does it back up what they're preaching, it also saves on production costs.
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