National Basketball Association

Rare sneaker shortage in Raptorland

Published Oct. 12, 2010 10:08 a.m. ET

foxsports

A few years back Jay Triano, the Raptors coach, happened upon a homeless man outside the Air Canada Centre.

The homeless man asked for money. Triano had a different idea.

"What size are your feet?" asked the coach.

"Thirteen," said the man.

"Be here tomorrow," said Triano. And the next day Triano, having cleaned out his closet, brought the man a large sack of shoes. There were sneakers, mostly - piles and piles of sneakers, the majority of them barely worn.

Such is just one curious reality of an NBA life: Everybody with the run of a locker room has the potential to own more free pairs of athletic footwear than he can possibly wear in a lifetime.

That's why the events of this pre-season are essentially unprecedented: There's a sneaker shortage in Raptorland, and nobody involved with the club remembers anything of the sort happening before.

Kevin DiPietro, the Raptors longtime equipment manager, says the average player uses about 30 pairs in an 82-game season. The Raptors' locker room has an entire storage room devoted to maintaining sufficient inventory for the roster. And so deep is the potential attachment between pro and sole that Jarrett Jack, the Raptors point guard, converted a bedroom in his Atlanta-area home into what he calls his "shoe room." He's got 600 pairs of sneakers in there, and is currently having the place renovated with custom racks and lighting.

"Most people who know me, know I have an obsession with sneakers," Jack said.

Against that backdrop of abundance, imagine DiPietro's shock in the knowledge that a supply of the preferred on-court footwear of two of his team's best players, Leandro Barbosa and Sonny Weems, has been elusive this October. For two pre-season games now Barbosa, the guard from Sao Paulo acquired in an offseason trade, has played in shoes bearing the yellow, green and blue of his beloved Brazilian national team - hardly a good match for the red, black and white colour scheme of his new team.

And Weems, who recently signed a one-year deal to endorse adidas, has been committing a shoe-industry sacrilege - he has been sporting a high-top model manufactured by Nike, the corporate rival of the company that signs his endorsement cheques.

What's going on?

"(Adidas) is just having a little bit of a crisis right now. ... It's the first time ever," said DiPietro. "I just thank God (Barbosa) had his shoes from Brazil."

Said Barbosa: "I don't know what's going on with adidas. All I know is, they're late.'

Barbosa and Weems, both of whom are paid to wear the brand, said they're not sure when to expect the new shipment of shoes in Raptors red, black and white. The company sent both players a box of shoes before training camp began.

But neither Barbosa nor Weems felt comfortable in any of the models they were initially sent. Weems, who wears a size 15 and spent last season wearing the Peak brand, said he wants to play this season in the adidas currently worn by Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose.

Barbosa, whose shoe size falls somewhere between a 121/2 and a 13, said he wants the same model of adidas he wore for the Brazilian team, only in Raptors colours. He said the shoes the company sent him last month hurt his feet.

DiPietro, a tireless attendant to detail, isn't simply waiting for the product to arrive. The equipment manager, who doubles as the team's travel coordinator, spent Sunday scouring a handful of sporting-goods retailers in Boston, where Toronto played a pre-season game, hoping to find shoes that would suit Barbosa and Weems. His search came up empty. On Monday DiPietro made a stop at an adidas store in Chicago, where the Raptors play an exhibition on Tuesday night, and where he finally stumbled on something approaching a jackpot. He didn't find Weems the Rose model he covets, but he scored two pairs of a not-dissimilar high cuts in black and white, size 15. He found a couple of different options for Barbosa, including a pair of the old-school Pro Models that the Brazilian had been wanting to try.

The players, of course, had yet to road test the new rubber. And what if the new finds don't meet with approval?

"The players will autograph 'em and they'll go (to charity)," said DiPietro. "Or if there's kids in Toronto who wear size 13 or 15, we'll hand 'em out that way, as well."

Indeed, in the NBA, there's plenty of sneakers to go around, this pre-season excluded.