Joe Ingles is the NBA’s model of consistency.
The Utah Jazz swingman played 379 consecutive league games, and did so by rarely changing shoes.
While other NBA players tear their trainers – sometimes changing three or four times in the same game – Ingles once wore the same size 13, yellow and white pair for six weeks, even though they had a ketchup stain on the toe. a pre-game meal incident.
“All my teammates were laughing at me like, ‘Why don’t you get new shoes?'” He said. “It just doesn’t bother me. The shoe is comfortable, my feet feel good. We’re trying to win a basketball game, I’m not worried. Of course, looking back now, it’s probably a little dirty that I was doing this.”
The Nike Kobe AD Mid, Ingles’ favorite shoe, was originally released in August 2017. Ingles has worn it for each of his 162 games over the past two seasons, despite not being produced since the 2017-18 season. Wearing a discontinued model was already a challenge, but all Kobe Bryant-related merchandising became harder to find after the NBA legend died in January. Nike hasn’t released any Bryant products since, but the company will kick off a week of Bryant celebration with new footwear and apparel starting Sunday, which would have been Bryant’s 42nd birthday.
The lack of availability of Bryant-related products has forced Ingles to resort to unusual measures to get his favorite kicks on the pitch, even though he has signed a deal with Nike that provides him with clothing and sneakers.
Jazz equipment manager Adam Klauke said he gets Ingles’ shoes “wherever we can find them,” including shipments of purchases on Amazon, eBay, and the popular StockX shoe resale marketplace. So far they haven’t had to pay extravagant prices to keep the English happy, which Klauke called “lucky”. However, buying shoes through public resale channels led to some awkward moments for the Jazz Forward.
“You kind of forget that your name is on the account,” Ingles said. “I’ll order and the guys will reply like, ‘Oh, this is Joe Ingles from Jazz? I can’t believe you bought my shoes!’ I never answer, because I’m probably too lazy to answer, but I’d do anything to find a shoe that I like. “
Once he finds such a couple, he is reluctant to let them go.
“We know how he is and always the same style,” said teammate Royce O’Neale.
Teammate Donovan Mitchell has already worn 11 different colors of his Adidas shoe during the NBA reboot. It could take the Englishman two seasons to reach that number.
“Joe will probably go through five or six pairs of shoes in a season,” Klauke said. “Same model all season, for training and games. He feels comfortable in those shoes and he wants those shoes, so if it’s not broken don’t fix it.”
Klauke is holding on to six or seven new pairs – spotless, to be clear – to help the Brit finish this season. There are also some lightly used pairs on the deck.
“If they start to get really dirty and wear out, that’s when we start using them for practice,” Klauke said. “Joe will tell me when he’s done with the shoes.”
Ingles will be back on the pitch in Sunday’s first round playoff match against the Denver Nuggets on the first day of Nike’s “Mamba Week,” an extension of a tradition that began in 2016 with “Mamba Day,” which honored the Bryant’s last game – coincidentally against English and jazz.
On that day, the company presented all of its sponsored athletes around the world with a pair of black and gold Kobe 11s for the first “Mamba Day”. Ingles wore the custom pair during warm-up, but by the time Bryant was finishing his 60-point masterpiece, Ingles was back in the Kobe 10s – the model he wore for three seasons before moving to Kobe AD, which by then had already been interrupted. The contrast between the shoes was evident in the third quarter when Ingles was matched on the perimeter against Bryant, who wore the special black and gold trainers, as Jack Nicholson watched from his regular sideline seat.
“Ten years ago, I never thought I’d play in the NBA, let alone [Bryant’s] last game, “Ingles said.” One of the coolest things that ever happened was playing that game and him signing the shoes, when Nike made us all a shoe, and had the match date on it and all that. “
As his streak of consecutive games grows, he plans to continue wearing sneakers from Bryant’s line. Maybe not the latest.
“I’ll wear the Kobe until no one else wears it and as everyone else moves on to the next one, I’ll move on to what everyone has now,” he said.
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