“We really are for the community because we don’t charge to get in our games,” said Rawlings, the founder and commissioner of the AEBL, which kicked off its 12th season on July 6. Through support from sponsors, AEBL games are free to the public and feature small business vendors, food trucks, on-court games, and contests for kids during halftime and timeouts. Besides hosting back-to-school drives, scholarship giveaways, and community givebacks, the league allows fans to meet the players, take pictures and get autographs. “They can’t do that in these other arenas. So when you come to our games, you’re getting all of the aspects of a professional game for free.”

Fans have seen respected local hoopers from surrounding areas and colleges test their skills against a spectrum of NBA players, including recent NBA Finals opponents Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving and Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown. AEBL has also served as a family reunion as former LA Clippers teammates Montrezl Harrell and Williams have teamed up multiple times. Current and former Atlanta Hawks players Trae Young, Paul Millsap and Joe Johnson have played over the years. Johnson has a team that is going for a three-peat championship this summer.

“Playing in leagues like [AEBL] is therapeutic because it takes you back to your childhood, playing the game with passion in the park or rec leagues, and everybody comes out,” said Johnson, head of the Iso Yoga team, which is named after his new yoga studio in Atlanta. Most Atlantans remember Johnson for his six All-Star Game appearances with the Hawks and when he played for the famed Atlanta Celtics AAU team during his junior year of high school in the late 1990s. “[AEBL] is a very nice intimate setting. It may not be like playing in front of 20,000 people, but the 800 or 1,000 people that do show up? Man, it’s so much fun, bro.”

While many have come to know the league for the men’s play with viral moments such as former Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas scoring a league-record 65 points or Harrell shattering the backboard twice, AEBL has also promoted the women’s game. In 2015, the league began hosting a women’s all-star game during the men’s championship weekend and invited some of the city’s top female players. The all-star game became so popular that an Atlanta Entertainment Basketball League Women’s pro-am was planned for 2020. COVID-19 pandemic restrictions delayed the league until 2021. Now entering its fourth year, AEBLW has become an outlet for women to showcase their playing and coaching skills while at home from overseas play, staying sharp during the college offseason or waiting for their next WNBA opportunity.

“Very few women that played in high school go on to play in college and an even smaller percentage of them go on to play professionally,” said Portia Benbow, the Senior Manager of Community Impact for the Atlanta Hawks. Before her current role, she spent three years working with the AEBL to launch the AEBLW league. Benbow said that though there are a handful of women’s leagues in America, the number is even smaller when it comes to pro-ams and ones that attract top talent. “Leagues like [AEBLW] give women a high-level platform to get exposure again in competitive play, to showcase their talent and to stay in shape.”

Notable players who have played in AEBLW include LSU Lady Tigers standout guard Flau’jae Johnson and Chicago Sky assistant coach Tamera “Ty” Young. This year, the league will feature players such as 2024 Georgia High School Player of the Year and McDonald’s All-American Dani Carnegie, who will be playing her first year at Georgia Tech.

“We always understood the importance of women playing the game and making sure that they had the resources and then also putting the eyeballs on them in a way that I don’t even think that the WNBA understood until recently,” said Rawlings. He said AEBL aspires to expand the women’s summer league and create a league similar to the NBA G League for female players looking to enter or return to the WNBA.

“We want to force the opportunity for women to make more money playing,” Rawlings said. He said that women who want to hoop, let alone be compensated, during the summer are always at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts.

For perspective, the WNBA plays games during the summer and has 12 teams. With so few roster spots, many players find paid opportunities overseas or accept that they won’t be making money playing anywhere. The NBA’s G League has 31 teams, with the possibility of going to one of 30 NBA teams, and players earn a minimum of $40,500 per season. Rawlings hopes to get at close to paying half of the G League’s minimum salary to female players and allow them to stay in America to play. He has aspirations of creating this new platform by next year.

“It’s gonna transform and really transcend the summer aspect of basketball where we create a pipeline where WNBA teams could also recruit and be exposed to talent they may not even see on the collegiate level.”

AEBL has also entered youth basketball. In the past decade, NBA legends such as Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant in 2015 and Lakers forward LeBron James in 2019 have blasted AAU basketball for not teaching fundamentals and focusing on playing more games to make money and justify expensive registration fees. As recently as May, NBA champion and Hall of Famer Alonzo Mourning called the league “tainted” on the All the Smoke podcast.

A 2022 Aspen Institute study reported that rising registration costs and other expenses like shoes, clothes and gear have left many kids out of the growing “pay-to-play” travel team model in youth sports. Many parents reluctantly pay up, hoping to get their kids access to seemingly better resources than their local school or gym rec league can provide. They also see it as an opportunity to be seen by more talent scouts and assume it will create a path to college scholarships and, ultimately, the NBA. So, people with at least a couple of connections and a little know-how create more teams and tournaments to capitalize on those hopes.

“Youth basketball needs to be disrupted,” said Rawlings, who started the Jr. AEBL league in 2020. The league focuses on developing fundamental skills to help kids decide if they want to continue to the next level and have fun while doing so, rather than forcing them. “The actual product of youth basketball is really suffering tremendously because everybody’s focused on the money. Everybody’s focused on their kid becoming a pro or signing an NIL deal and we’re forgetting about making sure that the kids are growing and developing, falling in love with the game.”

The Jr. AEBL league standouts are invited to play for AEBL’s Elite youth teams, which compete exclusively in Adidas’ middle school youth basketball circuits. AEBL created “The 24” High School All-Star Basketball Game for boys and girls and the HBCU Elite 100 Prospect Camp, launched in 2021.

This year, HBCU Elite 100 invites high school and juco players to camps in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, New York, and Charlotte, North Carolina, where they can showcase their skills for HBCU basketball coaches and pro scouts. The top 20 prospects in the camps are divided into two teams and play against each other so coaches can get a deeper look at their games. The concept is similar to the long-running National Basketball Players Association 100 camp and Nike Elite 100 camp that funnel highly-ranked high school players to Division 1 colleges and the NBA. The exception is that the HBCU Elite 100 purposely guides interested players to Black colleges.

“We do know and understand that HBCUs before the last couple of years were not sought out among elite athletes, it was always a backup option,” admits Rawlings, noting that he’s seen players get scholarship offers on the spot at the camp. He said 15 boys and eight girls have signed with HBCU teams through the camp. “We want this to be a driving force to get more kids to go to these schools and to create silos for coaches to find the next wave of talent. Because outside of Greek letter organizations and family lineage, you don’t hear about HBCUs being discussed in the sports world.”

To add icing to the cake, Rawlings helped orchestrate a National HBCU Signing Day event in Atlanta this past June to celebrate recent HBCU signees, even those who did not participate in the camp. The event gave them a taste of what athletes attending larger schools experience, inspiring others to follow them.

“It’s a great experience especially because you feel the family vibes here,” said Ny’mire Little, one of the four athletes featured at the signing event. Little will be playing for Clark Atlanta University this fall.  

“We’re bigger than basketball,” said Rawlings, who, before launching AEBL, split time managing up-and-coming rap artists and sponsorships for the A3C Festival and Conference while also working as a coach with Nike’s Georgia Stars AAU team and in the Atlanta Hawks basketball development department. “When I created the league, it was to also foster opportunities and connections for people in our community to be able to get access and then be able to get opportunity in the sports world.”

The talk reignited over the weekend when Chicago Sky rookie forward Angel Reese was assessed a flagrant foul 1 against Clark, a guard for the Indiana Fever, while trying to block her shot. Once again, the chatter got ugly, with many relying on deeply ingrained stereotypes around race, gender, and sexuality. Earlier this month, conservative sports pundit Clay Travis claimed the Fever star was a victim of discrimination against “white heterosexual women in a Black lesbian league” after Clark received a flagrant foul 1 from Sky guard Chennedy Carter.

With that statement, Travis said the quiet part out loud. Pitting Clark, a white, heterosexual woman who fits into conventionally approved, Eurocentric standards of womanhood, against the rest of the league, which is predominantly Black and perceived as largely queer or gender non-conforming, reinforces long-standing tropes of the queer villain.

Ahead of the most recent matchup between the Fever and the Sky, reporters asked Clark about “the chatter” on social media and how some have used her name to attack other players in the league. Clark initially (and repeatedly) redirected the conversation back to basketball without immediately condemning any of the harassment other players were receiving. The Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington spoke about Clark’s comments on X: “How one can not be bothered by their name being used to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia & the intersectionalities of them all is nuts,” she wrote. “We all see the s—. We all have a platform … Silence is a luxury.” In response, The Athletic staff writer James Boyd asked Clark directly about her name being weaponized and how she feels about it. “It’s disappointing,” Clark said. “The women in our league deserve the same amount of respect, so people should not be using my name to push those agendas.”

In many ways, however, the damage has already been done. The real “Caitlin Clark effect” seems to be a bandwagon of new WNBA fans and media members reinforcing some of the most toxic societal ideas about good and bad, right and wrong, hero and villain. They’re also reinforcing long-held tropes about what kinds of women are deserving of protection. But this is also par for the course regarding the WNBA — and women’s sports in general.

Clark is the kind of athlete women’s sports have historically fought to protect. In the WNBA, this goes back to the beginning of the league, where players given the “Great White Hope” treatment, such as former Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird and New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, were tasked with “saving” the fledgling league. If these white, cis, and (in Bird’s case, perceived) straight athletes were here to save the league, it begs the question of who they were saving it from. The answer, one can deduce, is all the other athletes in the W, many of whom were Black, masculine or gender non-conforming, and queer.

In the Victorian era, the argument against women’s sports was essentially paternalistic — women, and mainly upper-class white women, needed to be “protected” from damaging their bodies through athletic endeavors because men feared it would damage their reproductive potential. There was worry that sports would make women too masculine, a fear that was rooted in anti-gay beliefs.

When sports were slowly opened to women, events such as golf or tennis were seen as acceptable — sports that could be played while wearing long skirts and were perceived as more feminine. Eventually, swimming fit into that category as well. In track and field, women were once only allowed to run short distances because it was believed that they were too weak to handle longer races. In basketball, women played half-court 6-on-6 basketball until shockingly recently because full-court was considered too strenuous for women’s bodies. While the Office of Civil Rights began to consider banning 6-on-6 high school girls’ basketball as early as 1958, it would take 37 years for the sport to be completely erased from schools. In Iowa, where Clark is from, half-court basketball wasn’t abolished until 1993, and it was the second-to-last state to do so (Oklahoma was the last, phasing it out in 1995).

Even sex-testing and trans-exclusionary policies in sports were designed to ostensibly protect white cis women from the perceived dominance of athletes who don’t conform to traditional ideas of femininity, many of whom are Black and/or transgender. Much of the legislation to prevent trans women from playing women’s sports uses rhetoric about “protecting” or “saving” girls and women, painting transgender women as a threat. Portraying Clark as the victim in her interactions with fellow players is an extension of this idea that a certain kind of woman should be safe to play and excel in women’s sports. It not only relies on the concept of white female victimhood but also of predatory lesbians.

Coverage of the incident between Clark and Carter (and the most recent dustup with Clark and Reese) primarily took two tracks: The first claimed Carter was overly aggressive and targeted Clark. The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune went so far as to call the play “assault,” trafficking in dangerous rhetoric seeking to criminalize a Black woman for a play against a white woman in a pro basketball game. Similarly, after Reese’s foul on Clark, some, like former NFL quarterback Matt Leinart, claimed Reese should be suspended because her play is “not good for the game.”

The other argument being made is that Clark’s teammates should better protect her on the court as if Clark, an adult woman playing pro basketball, needs someone to protect her from the league’s players. Both these arguments place Clark in the role of victim and the rest of the league in the role of villain. And there are real repercussions — a fan confronted Sky players, including Carter and Reese, outside their hotel in Washington.

This narrative continued following the Fever’s game against the Connecticut Sun on June 10, with coverage focusing almost exclusively on Sun forward Alyssa Thomas and Carrington — two openly gay Black players — whose on-court behavior was framed as being overly aggressive or targeting Clark rather than hard-nosed defense and heated competition. Following the blowback to Carrington mocking Clark for flopping, she took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend herself: “Why yall so mad at me & bein mean!?” she wrote. “I jus be hoopin & havin fun.”

Clark is not the first straight, cis, white player tasked with bringing a “mainstream” audience to the WNBA. The league has always struggled to market itself and its players, fearing that appearing too Black or too gay would alienate “mainstream” audiences and drive the potential of straight, male fans away — something women’s leagues have wrongly assumed they need to succeed. In 2002, Mary G. McDonald described the WNBA’s idealized image as that of the “good white girl,” noting that “constant emphasis on the players’ moral attributes … helps to distance the league from projections of alleged deviance imagined to be embodied by ‘fatal women’ — that is, bodies marked as black and lesbian.”

In 2002, Bird was placed in the position of bringing in viewers as the pretty white girl (she did not come out publicly until 2017, largely because she felt pressured into maintaining the public image the league wanted from her, she said recently). A 2002 article in the Hartford Courant called Bird “articulate with fresh-faced, girl-next-door appeal.” Constance Schwartz, the then-vice president of strategic marketing with The Firm, said Bird was “a beautiful person, which definitely helps.” Sports Illustrated described her as “pretty, quick-witted and not too imposing at 5’9,” noting that “she fits in anywhere” (all of this is, of course, code for “white”).

Ionescu left college in 2020 as the first pick in the WNBA draft and with a lot of hype, including an ESPN cover. Research by Risa F. Isard and Dr. E. Nicole Melton found that Ionescu, a white woman who played in just three games before a season-ending injury, received twice as much coverage as A’ja Wilson, a Black woman who was the 2020 WNBA MVP. Ionescu has a shoe with Nike, has been on the cover of NBA 2K, and was called “basketball’s golden girl” ahead of her WNBA debut.

When Bird entered the league in 2002, she was called “a marketer’s dream,” and several columns were dedicated to the number of sponsorships she would receive, a glaring disparity in a predominantly Black league that hasn’t been overcome to this day. Even before her first season began, Clark had record-breaking endorsements, including an eight-figure deal with Nike.

“In [women’s basketball] you gottah be the best player, best looking, most marketable, most IG followers, just to sit at the endorsement table,” New York Liberty forward Jonquel Jones said on X in 2022. “Not to mention me being a black lesbian woman. Lord the seats disappearing from the table as I speak,” she added.

Isard and Melton’s research found that Black athletes’ gender presentation greatly factored into how much media attention they received. White athletes who presented in more masculine ways received more than five times the number of mentions as Black players who had masculine-of-center presentations (212 to 41, respectively).

“There is a privilege that [white players] have inherently, and the privilege of appearing feminine,” Los Angeles Sparks rookie forward Cameron Brink recently told UPROXX. “Some of my teammates are more masculine. Some of my teammates go by they/them pronouns. I want to bring more acceptance to that and not just have people support us because of the way that we look.”

Some of the rhetoric has been more explicit than others. Fans on social media have said that Clark is being bullied because she is straight. Earlier this year, Travis said other players were “uncomfortable” with Clark “being a straight white girl” because “in the WNBA … there’s a lot of lesbians, and there’s a lot of minorities,” estimating that the league is at least 70% gay, playing up the number in a way that has the effect of making the league seem like an angry mob of lesbians (in reality, approximately 25% of the league is openly queer).

Diana Taurasi, a 20-year veteran known for being a league heel, were attacked in the media for allegedly hating on Clark ahead of the WNBA season as if Taurasi hasn’t “hated on” everyone she’s played against for the last couple of decades. The difference, however, is that Taurasi has embraced the role of the villain for herself, and it wasn’t placed on her by outsiders, akin to what writer Mark Harris has called “a joyous reclamation of the idea of gay monstrosity.”

“I’m not a marketing major,” Taurasi recently told Rolling Stone. “I don’t f–king know how all this s— works. I’m here to ball out and try to kill whoever’s in front of me. You know what I mean?”

Ultimately, long-time fans of the WNBA are frustrated by much of the coverage of Clark because it harms most of the athletes who play in the league. The W isn’t the W without the players who make it the most competitive pro league in the world. Lifting one athlete at the expense of all the others goes against everything the WNBA represents and only serves to reinforce ugly ideas about the women and trans people who play alongside Clark.

Okoro said he initially heard about HOLO in late October 2023 through his agent. As he started researching the company, he became more intrigued. Okoro flew out to Portland, Oregon, met with the HOLO team to learn about their backgrounds, and realized they all had similar upbringings. When the footwear company brought a deal to the table, the decision to sign was easy.

“I wanted to be a part of a company that wants me,” Okoro said. “[HOLO] told me that from the beginning.” He was also encouraged by the idea of building something from scratch. “You have to start at the bottom to get to the top,” he said. “Me and HOLO, like we both started at the bottom. [They] saw me. The process, and us building this together, is going to be fun.”

HOLO and Okoro’s partnership means he’s essential to the company as an athlete and investor. 

“I think a lot of companies out there today throw out the equity language because it sounds good,” said Daveed Cohen, an agent with Young Money APAA Sports who leads HOLO’s brand strategy in social media, content creation, and community engagement.

The Atlanta-born hooper said having an equity deal has been a learning experience that he appreciated.

“It’s kind of the right thing to do in today’s day and age with athletes,” he said. “But after you’ve put out that storyline that the athlete got equity, what are you actually doing about that?”

As part of HOLO Footwear’s priority in basketball, Okoro participates in everything from shoe design and testing to social media marketing for the yet-to-be-released sneakers. It’s a two-way working relationship between him and the company’s founders, Rommel Vega and Yuri Rodriguez.

“It means constant communication, man,” Vega said. During the interview held on the Zoom platform, he held up his phone to show how often he and Okoro communicate. The text message thread shows almost daily conversations between both men. As for Okoro’s role in the company?

“He’ll be at the board meetings, interacting with other investors. Having equity equals voting rights. Voting rights means we make moves together, or we don’t move at all,” Vega said.

HOLO Footwear was started in 2020. The company aims to create sustainable and attainable sneakers. Its goal is to make great shoes that don’t break the bank. HOLO understands cheaper performance shoes used to be more frequent but now feel rare.

“We live in such a different world. I don’t know that shoes have to be sold for $35, but they don’t have to be sold for $200 to make a living. We swung the pendulum from one direction or another,” Vega said. He believes there’s a market for an inexpensive basketball sneaker with the requisite tech to compete with the traditional powerhouses.

“If you’re looking at the marketplace, everything is between $160 and $200. But if you’re coming in at between $100 and, say $120 to $130, and you’re sending the sneakers out to a pretty premium retail space and it has a performance attribute, I think you have something really special,” Vega said. “I think that’s a sweet spot many people struggle to hit.”

Affordability is another vital characteristic of HOLO Footwear products. Vega’s parents immigrated from Nicaragua to Miami in the 1990s.” I went to school in the areas of Miami that were really disenfranchised,” he said. “I grew up in a trailer park that was near 36th Street. You hear people rapping about the Miami Jai Alai. That was across the street from where I grew up.”

Vega knows from personal experience how expensive it can be for families trying to outfit their children with high-quality sneakers. He wants to use the company to make a difference.

The co-founders have more than 50 years of combined experience in the footwear industry, having worked for Merrell, Columbia Sportswear, Saucony and Puma. Before the deal with Okoro, HOLO Footwear’s bread and butter was outdoor sneakers and boots.

HOLO aims to bring the same high standard to the IO:01. “We use a lot of our learnings that we’ve [picked up] along the way from the other industry, and we apply it to how we made this shoe,” Vega said.

“We study. For [Okoro’s first shoe], we wanted a ‘keep it simple, stupid’ kind of thing. He’s an athlete. His body is his temple. We want to make sure the knees are good and his foot is really good, so we added the strap,” Vega said. “There’s so much design power at this company. We wanted to make sure that Isaac can put it on the court night in and night out.”

Cohen said HOLO’s flexibility is a massive benefit to Okoro. 

Kenny Giarla/NBAE via Getty Images

Cleveland Cavaliers forward Isaac Okoro wears blue HOLO Footwear IO:01 sneakers during the game against the Washington Wizards on Feb. 7 at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC.

David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images

Cleveland Cavaliers forward Isaac Okoro wears black HOLO IO:01 sneakers in the game against the Houston Rockets on Dec. 18, 2023, at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.

David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images

Cleveland Cavaliers forward Isaac Okoro wears pink HOLO Footwear IO:01 sneakers in the game against the Chicago Bulls on Feb. 14 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.

“Isaac put them on, he said, ‘man, these are so comfortable.’ From there, the next phase was to test them out. He’d run and practice and give us some feedback.” HOLO quickly made adjustments based on Okoro’s opinions, whittling down the process for testing and adjustments from two to three months to a matter of weeks.

“Because Isaac, again, has a seat at the table, and he’s working directly with the co-founder, that can get done,” Cohen said. “[The sneaker] was a huge priority, but I think the unique value proposition, again, is the ability for HOLO to be nimble and make quick decisions because you’re talking directly to the head honcho.”

The amount of care HOLO has shown for Okoro’s first release is part of a long-term strategy that includes an apparel line. Vega said the company is taking its time to ensure all the pieces are in place before the IO:01 officially goes on sale in the fall. They’re working with retailers nationwide and establishing partnerships to maximize sales. HOLO wants to build things from the ground up.

“We keep getting [excellent] feedback. Now, we’re playing with color and personalizing it for him. I think it’s going to be important. And we’ll see which ones get the most heat and then be able to release them. We are making some special editions for some people who requested the shoe. So, we’re excited about that. We’re not in any rush to make a buck on them. And we really, really want to do it correctly,” Vega said.

Okoro said he’s honored HOLO let him be the first player to represent its brand and have an equity stake. He shared that his favorite part of the sneaker-building process was picking out the colorways “and seeing what stands out and what pops out.”

Equity deals are increasing, but it’s still a relatively new landscape, especially for someone like Okoro and a company like HOLO, making their first foray into making high-performance basketball sneakers. They’ll pay attention to sales numbers, but they’re also looking at engagement across social media and how the release of the sneaker affects underprivileged neighborhoods.

“Those are things that drive success for the storyline,” Vega said. “Were we able to get [the shoe] in the hands of kids? And can they afford it? We want them to wear it, and they enjoy it. Have we educated them on the sustainability piece? And, really, what does that truly mean in today’s day and age?”

My family had a recent encounter with suicide when our son’s former teammate Terrence Butler killed himself. They played basketball together at Drexel University before my son graduated this year, and became close while sharing an apartment suite. Butler, who would have been a junior this season, was popular on campus, but had only played in eight games his first two seasons because of injuries. He was not playing with the team this summer, but still was on scholarship and part of the Drexel program, my son told me. His body was found Aug. 2 in his on-campus apartment.

Drexel players were told how Butler killed himself, but the cause of death has not been publicly released. That silence itself shows how society is not ready to fully talk about suicide – it still carries a stigma that the results of other illnesses do not.

I’m alarmed by the death of this young athlete, and not just because we are in the middle of National Suicide Prevention Week. The Black community is experiencing a major increase in suicides. The suicide rate increased 19.2% from 2018 to 2021, which is the most recent three-year period measured by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It jumped 58% from 2011 to 2021, and the rate for Black people ages 10 to 24 increased 36.6% from 2018 to 2021.

Mental health has been receiving more attention, in and out of sports, since the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic pushed millions of people into dark places. A few athletes, such as gymnast Simone Biles, Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan and tennis player Naomi Osaka, have gone public with their mental health challenges. College athletic programs have begun to pay attention to the issue, but the resources they devote to mental health are tiny compared with what they spend on winning. Last year, a spate of five college athletes taking their own lives was labeled a “crisis” by a few athletes and mental health advocates.

It’s obvious to me that college athletes face elevated risk factors for suicide. Division I players face constant pressure from coaches to perform, with the possibility of losing their scholarships constantly hanging over their heads. Year-round training and travel schedules don’t allow time to decompress. Many athletes are public figures who deal with harsh and often personal judgment on social media. Body-shaming is common for athletes, especially women. Many coaches prioritize their need to win over their players’ mental and physical health.

What is it like for a young person to get yelled at, belittled or cursed out regularly while playing a game they’re supposed to love, and is often at the core of their identity? Most Division I athletes can tell you how that feels.

Social media is full of posts about “mental toughness” from trainers, coaches, and others with zero training in mental health. They send the message that to secure and hold onto that elusive Division I scholarship, young athletes have to “overcome adversity” or “block out negativity.” Most of the time, those expectations are reasonable. But what about young people who have trouble with the mental challenges of sports? We don’t blame them when they injure an ankle or a shoulder – what about athletes who, through no fault of their own, are prone to injured psyches?

On top of that dynamic, verbal and emotional abuse are normalized in college sports. Some might say that being “coached hard” is necessary to succeed. But players used to tough out concussions, too. Now we know how dangerous that was. We should similarly reconsider the parts of our sports culture that risk the lives of athletes with mental health challenges.

College sports still have not fully accepted responsibility for athletes’ mental health, said Emmett Gill, founder of Athlete Talk, an app that provides support and resources for college programs.

“Mental health problems are still that dirty secret,” said Gill, who has a master’s degree and doctorate in sports social work and directed the student-athlete wellness program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Gill estimated that the average Power 5 athletic program has three full-time mental health staffers to care for hundreds of student-athletes. Outside of the Power 5, programs might have one or two, and more than half of those non-Power 5 schools do not have any full-time mental health professionals on staff. (Some hire outside consultants.) Historically Black colleges and universities are starting to add more, he said, because their athletes’ need is greater “and because they care.”

Drexel is not the only basketball program where a young Black man died too young last month. On Aug. 21, Reggie Chaney, a forward for the Houston team that made the 2021 Final Four, was found dead in a friend’s apartment, and police said he was not killed by someone else. On Thursday, Chaney’s cause of death was still listed as “pending” by the medical examiner’s office, which said an autopsy was being performed. We don’t know if Chaney killed himself. One other unfortunate possibility is an overdose. Using illegal drugs is a common form of self-medication for people with mental health problems. Chaney, 23, was a week away from departing for Greece to begin his pro career.

Suicide risks for Black athletes are elevated, Gill said, because they disproportionately come from environments characterized by poverty, fractured families and violence. Their coaches, meanwhile, are likely to be white men who can have trouble forging an authentic connection with Black players.

“A lot of Black athletes are likely to commit a different type of suicide,” Gill said. “It’s not immediate. It’s slow … engaging in gun violence, addictive behaviors, or they decide, ‘I’m just going to do my 25-to-life.’ But I also think we’re seeing more Black and brown athletes dying by suicide in the traditional sense.

“Suicide is not about just about last year or last season,” he continued. “It’s about when I was 8, 10, 12 years old. It’s about those adverse childhood experiences. Those don’t go away unless you deal with them. So when that coach starts yelling at you like somebody in your family did, or that trainer touches you, he didn’t mean to necessarily touch you that way, but it triggers you. And this can start a spiral of issues.

“The other thing is that we’re fooling ourselves. We’re really not fully invested in mental health … I never want to say we’re not trying, but we’re not investing the resources to address all of these things that these athletes are dealing with.”

This week of suicide prevention awareness provides an opportunity for reflection and action. I think the NCAA needs to do more. To start, it should mandate that each program have a proper ratio of mental health professionals to athletes. For schools without enough money to hire them, there’s plenty of available cash in the college sports ecosystem. It would not be unreasonable, for example, to create a “mental health fund” by assessing a percentage of all coaches’ salaries over $1 million and all TV contracts over $100 million.

Coaches and administrators need training to address the connections between mental health and the extreme levels of pressure, coercion and sometimes abuse that too many athletes experience. The training also should combat the stereotype that athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are often Black, have some sort of extra toughness. What they actually have is extra trauma. If that trauma is not addressed, it can become deadly.

Finally, let’s eliminate the stigma around mental illnesses. They are not a sign of weakness. They have a cause, like a broken wrist or a torn ligament. When recognized and treated, they can be healed. There is no shame in how Terrence Butler ended his life. There should only be understanding – and action.

Early in the program, the leader of the National Basketball Retired Players Association steps up to the podium to address the group, and he’s neither a former big-time basketball star nor a former NBA player.

The name he goes by: Choo. 

Wait … Choo who?

Meet Charles “Choo” Smith, a former guard with the Harlem Globetrotters and chairman of the NBRPA. Smith, an active member of the NBRPA and a member of the group’s Governor’s Committee since 2016, is the first Globetrotter to serve as chairman for the organization of retired players. He assumed the role from Johnny Davis, a former NBA veteran and coach.

Smith was named chairman of the NBRPA at the Legends brunch during February’s NBA All-Star Weekend in Salt Lake City.

“When someone mentioned I’d be the next chair after Johnny resigned, I laughed,” Smith said. “I wasn’t in the NBA, so I just thought no one would ever approve of it.”

But there was one quality about Smith that made him the right person for the position.

“His passion,” said Scott Rochelle, president and CEO of the NBRPA. “Choo sees every perspective and understands everyone’s empathy. And when that passion comes out there are times where you have to take a step back and say, ‘is he upset, or is he really into this?’

 “Most times he’s really into it. He just wants you to feel it.”

While he’s made a career connected with basketball, Smith is a fervent fan of his hometown Baltimore Orioles and his favorite player, Eddie Murray. One of his first acts of passion was connected to baseball. Smith’s love of the sport was so intense that he decided at an early age to carve out a baseball diamond in the Forest Park section of Baltimore where he lived.

“I measured the field, I put up the bases and I built it as a place where people could get together,” Smith said. “I wanted the kids in the neighborhood to have a place where they could play baseball and have fun.”

Baseball was the sport Smith thought he’d make a career of entering Baltimore City College high school. But the shift to basketball, which was just his hobby during his first two years of high school, came about when his skills were questioned during a summer league game.

“I was playing in a game with Devin Boyd [Towson University’s career scoring leader] and Andre Boyd [Robert Morris University Hall of Famer] and one of the guys in the game said, ‘Choo, you a scrub,’ ” Smith recalled. “Those guys playing were legends and basketball was my sport, but I ain’t nobody’s scrub. That’s when I started to take it seriously.”

Smith said he excelled in winning a church league championship later that year while competing against a collection of local legends. While his baseball coach encouraged him to skip basketball as a junior, Smith played on the City College team as a senior with his play attracting the attention of a few Division II and Division III programs.

After playing at Bowie State as a freshman, Smith transferred to the University of the District of Columbia. Smith made an impact in those three seasons in Washington, finishing his career as the school’s all-time leader in steals and assists.

As Smith was attempting to keep his basketball career going by playing in a few semipro leagues, he landed on the radar of a talent scout whose job was to find potential players for the Globetrotters and their opponent that travels with them, the Washington Generals.

“He told me that if I could come in and ball as a General that I one day could be a Globetrotter,” Smith said. “I blew them away because I was creating excitement in the games, and that’s how I became a Trotter.”

A requirement to join the team was learning the history of the iconic franchise. He discovered that Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton left the Globetrotters to become one of the NBA’s first Black players, and that Connie Hawkins and Wilt Chamberlain played with the team before launching their NBA careers.

“A lot of history that I just didn’t know,” Smith said. “It was important for me to understand in becoming an ambassador.”

The importance of that role, to Smith, was realized after an encounter with a young boy. Smith can’t remember the city, but he does recall it was a game in 2001 and the boy was hanging out with the team before and during the game and seemed magnetically attached to him.

As members of the team were taking photos with fans during halftime, Smith was shocked when the boy sat in his lap and wrapped his arms around him.

“His mother told me that he had stage four cancer, and he didn’t have much time,” Smith said, becoming emotional. “Here I thought at first this boy was being too clingy, and what he was going through put it all in perspective.

“You never know what people are going through. That’s the moment I fully understood my purpose in life.”

It’s a gorgeous Monday night in Baltimore, and driving through Catonsville it’s clear many of the local kids are kicking it with friends and enjoying the comfortable weather outside.

But inside Goals Baltimore, a sports complex just off the Baltimore Beltway, about 20 teens are focused on the sound of Smith’s voice.

“Stop, stop,” Smith barks, while putting the kids through a modified suicide drill. “Make sure you touch all the lines, make sure you do this right.”

Watching Smith, it’s clear that this is his purpose: helping develop the skill set — both mentally and physically — of the kids in his hometown.

It’s been in him his entire life, from the time he built that baseball field for his friends to play.

“I’ve had opportunities with coaching, chances to go into partnerships with businessmen who like the way I relate to people,” Smith said. “I’ve traveled to countries around the world and to all 50 states, but everything I’ve done in life has led me back to Baltimore.”

Smith’s accomplishments as a trainer and in running his Team Choo AAU program are evident by a quick glance at his social media platforms, where he often boasts about the destinations of his athletes. His kids have received college offers from schools ranging from Penn State University to Mount St. Mary’s to Vassar College, with many of the parents expressing their appreciation of his efforts.

A rising star currently under Smith’s tutelage: Autumn Fleary. She’s the only girl training under Smith at Goals on this Monday, but of the 20 kids she’s the most accomplished.

In April, Fleary was named the Baltimore Sun All-Metro girls basketball Player of the Year following her freshman season, and enters her sophomore year of high school with scholarship offers from major schools including Syracuse, Texas Christian and Virginia.

She’s trained with Smith since the third grade.

“There’s a lot I learn from him, especially ballhandling techniques,” Fleary said. “But the most important thing he’s told me is to remain humble and take nothing for granted. Coming from Baltimore the opportunities are rare, so he always tells me to bring it and work hard every time I step on the court.”

Besides training players and his AAU program, Smith always runs a camp each summer at Coppin State University. That camp is still in the recovery phase after being shut down for a year by the coronavirus pandemic, but on a recent Friday more than 40 kids were on Coppin’s main floor for a slate of games.

“Coppin knew what we were doing with our camp, and when they opened the new gym they asked us to bring it here,” Smith said. “The kids love coming here because it’s a great environment.”

Smith has bigger visions for youth development in his hometown. He’s worked out an agreement with the city of Baltimore to acquire a nearly 20-acre site where he boldly envisions athletic and educational centers as well as retail and housing in a place dubbed Arise. Details of the deal are still being worked out.

“I have an opportunity to provide something special, and I want to capitalize on that opportunity,” Smith said. “With the city embracing me on this project, we can really create some change.”

Joining the Globetrotters gave Smith an opportunity to meet some basketball legends and one of those greats, Curly Neal, pulled him aside after he joined the team and offered some advice.

“ ‘It’s your time,’ ” Smith recalled Neal telling him. “ ‘You love the work. Take this brand and continue to build it.’ ”

That advice could easily apply to his current role with the NRBPA, where Smith as chairman is helping continue to grow a long established brand.

“I got involved with the [NRBPA] years ago, and I remember someone saying that we need to get younger and we need to have programs that’s going to really help in the second phase of their life after basketball,” Smith said. “That was really intriguing to me.”

That led him to his current place within the organization as chairman, addressing a group of athletes at the recent breakfast in Las Vegas.

Some of them were legends who thought enough of Smith to be confident in his ability to lead.

“We’ve got a lot of work done, and there’s a lot of work to do,” Smith said. “I think I’ve proven to them I can handle it.”

Yet, when Boston arrived in Indianapolis less than two weeks later, she shocked the women’s basketball world with the logo stitched on her backpack, gym bag and sneakers. The 2022 Naismith Player of the Year stepped off the plane dressed head to toe in Adidas.

In early May, Boston inked a multiyear endorsement deal with Adidas after spending four years wearing Under Armour at South Carolina, where in 2022, she became the first player to sign a name, image and likeness deal with Under Armour. By signing with Adidas, Boston joined the brand’s loaded roster of WNBA athletes, including Candace Parker, Chelsea Gray, Kahleah Copper, Erica Wheeler, and Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike.

The Fever forward began her debut pro campaign lacing up a vibrant green colorway of the Adidas Exhibit Select model, which was launched in late June as the brand’s premier women’s basketball performance sneaker.

Through her first 20 WNBA games, Boston averaged 15.4 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 2.3 assists en route to becoming the eighth rookie in the league’s 27-year history to be named a starter in the All-Star Game.

During last week’s 2023 WNBA All-Star festivities in Las Vegas, Boston spoke with Andscape about joining Adidas, her biggest sneaker superstition and the goal to earn her own signature shoe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You shocked a lot of people by signing with Adidas after four years of wearing Under Armour at South Carolina.  What factored into your decision to start your WNBA career in three stripes? 

The brand does a great job of uplifting the younger basketball community. Because being a young girl in this sport, you’ve gotta have people to look up to. That’s definitely what Adidas is about. That’s what I’m about, being a role model for young girls.

Describe the process of deciding which brand to join.

Adidas gave a formal presentation to me and my family. It was very engaging from the moment it began. Then, afterward, my family and I had a deep discussion about everything. What Adidas showed us just looked and felt like things my family and I valued. And Adidas has followed through on what they pitched. 

What specifically did you want out of your rookie sneaker deal?

I just wanted a brand that would allow and help me be the best version of myself while I’m personally doing my part to grow the game of women’s basketball. I also wanted to give back to my community through my sneaker partnership, which Adidas has committed to helping me do.

You kept the decision close to your vest. But when you got to Indiana after the draft, you walked off the plane with an Adidas bag. Was that your way of teasing your deal?

That first day in Indiana, yeah, I had Adidas gear on. But I actually hadn’t decided yet at that point. I was just trying on Adidas gear to make sure I loved it. But my family and I took our time. We were waiting until the time was right to make an official decision.

You joined an elite company of WNBA players at Adidas, from Candace Parker to Chelsea Gray and Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike. Were you at all hesitant to partner with a company that already has so many stars?

You could look at it as overwhelming. But Adidas is building its brand with a certain caliber of players that I fit into. I felt that it’d be supercool to be surrounded by such high-level players.

Did any of them reach out to help sway you to sign with Adidas?

Not during the process, because I was trying to keep my decision under wraps. But once my deal was officially announced, all of them personally reached out to me. 

What do you need out of your footwear?

My biggest thing is my feet have to be comfortable. I wear a size 12, and in the past I’ve had to wear inserts inside my sneakers. My feet would hurt if I didn’t. But with my Adidas shoes, I haven’t put inserts in them at all this season. I think that’s pretty special. Being comfortable when you’re doing what you love is undervalued but necessary.

Do you have any superstitions surrounding sneakers?

I’m not a big sneaker changer. I don’t like wearing a new pair of shoes every other game. That’s not me. I keep pairs of sneakers for longer periods, like a quarter of the year or half the season, before I change to a new pair. I’ve worn the same colorway of the Adidas Select for the entire first half of the season. It wasn’t until All-Star that I figured I’d change my shoes to the colorway honoring Candace. That’s just me. I’ve just always been that way. I never want to overdo things with my feet.

What’s special about the Adidas Exhibit Select?

It’s honestly just very important to have a shoe designed specifically for women. We deserve to be comfortable doing what we love.

Only 12 women in the history of the WNBA have received their own signature shoe. One of them was your college coach, Dawn Staley. Did you lean on her for advice when deciding where to sign?

I mentioned to her that I was going through the process of picking a sneaker company. I told her I was leaning toward Adidas, and she loved the idea.

Is your goal to one day lace up your own shoe on a WNBA court? How would you make the case for why you should have your own shoe?

I absolutely want my own shoe one day. I’ve always been somebody who waits their turn for certain things to come. But I already know that I want the opportunity to wear my own signature shoe on the court at some point. Until then, I’ll let the way I hoop do most of the talking.

“It feels amazing to be part of Adidas,” said Boston. “Adidas is empowering women, and they’re opening the doors for women’s sports. It’s just continuing to grow the game.”

Boston will join Candace Parker, Chelsea Gray, Nneka Ogwumike and Chiney Ogwumike as a featured face of the Adidas Basketball category in the WNBA.

“We are beyond excited to welcome Aliyah to our Adidas Basketball family. She exudes strength, resilience, versatility and natural skill that is unmatched,” said Eric Wise, Adidas Basketball global general manager. “I know she’ll leave a lasting impact on the future of the game, and we are proud to be a part of this moment and support her on her journey to greatness.”

To begin the partnership, Boston participated in the brand’s interview series Remember The Why, where she discussed how she started playing the game in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and her journey in the sport since.

“Getting my name called first in the WNBA draft was a surreal feeling that I’ll never forget,” she said. “This is something that I dreamt about.”

The signing comes as a surprise after Boston starred at the Under Armour-sponsored University of South Carolina, where she became the first female basketball player to sign a name, image and likeness (NIL) deal with Under Armour in April 2022.

Boston was featured prominently in Under Armour’s current Protect This House ad campaign that was launched in March. Boston, who led South Carolina to the 2022 national championship and was named the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player, is one of only four athletes to appear in the basketball commercial, besides NBA star Stephen Curry, WNBA star Kelsey Plum and top high school prospect Bryson Tucker.

Boston was a breakout NIL marketing star during the final season of her collegiate career, in which she was named for a third time as a first team All-American and winner of the Lisa Leslie Award for a fourth consecutive season. Through her NIL deal with Under Armour, Boston’s No. 4 Gamecocks jersey became the first current collegiate jersey sold by the company to include a player’s last name. She also hosted a women’s basketball camp in her hometown of St. Thomas in partnership with Under Armour.

Although her NIL deal was signed just a year ago, the agreement did not automatically carry over into Boston’s pro career. Heading into Boston’s rookie season in the WNBA, her representatives at WME Basketball entered into new negotiations with multiple brands for a potential shoe deal.

Adidas ultimately offered both the most lucrative multiyear deal package and the opportunity to be featured as a next-generation star. Boston is expected to wear the same “ACE” series sneaker as Parker to begin her career, the Adidas Exhibit Select.

Boston is set to make her WNBA regular season debut on May 19, as the Indiana Fever take on the Connecticut Sun on the league’s opening day.

“I’m superexcited to continue to evolve into the best woman and athlete I can be while dominating on the court and being a role model alongside an incredible roster of hoopers,” said Boston. “It’s truly a blessing.”

Now in his third season with the Charlotte Hornets, the All-Star point guard is not only looking to turn around the franchise’s fortunes, he’s also looking to revive Puma’s once-dormant basketball category.

The second colorway of his second signature shoe with the company, the MB.02 Phenom, launches this week, with design details drafted off of his outsize personality, boldly placed tattoos, and love of loud looks.

“He’s Melo, that’s for sure. He is who he thinks he is,” said Jeremy Sallee, Puma Basketball’s head of design. “He’s one of one, rare, not from here – he’s got his own sense of style and he doesn’t care what’s going on trendwise. He’s gonna do what he wants to do, with supreme confidence. That’s the gift with Melo. He’s supremely confident with what he wears, how he plays and who he is.”

To get a sense of just how his star power has led to an immediate impact on the brand, a 24-hour glimpse of his debut game in the Puma MB signature series says it all. 

It was a Tuesday evening in October 2021, the night before his sophomore season in the NBA tipped off.

The 2021 Rookie of the Year award that Ball won as his draft’s No. 3 overall pick in 2020 was clearly not adding to any pressure he felt to follow up his debut season.

The 6-foot-7 point guard was in an uncrowded Charlotte-area gym, weaving through players several inches shorter, but just a few years younger, who played for Ball’s MB Elite AAU team. Ball’s business manager, former NBA player Jermaine Jackson, is the coach of the AAU team, which Jackson’s teenage son also plays for.

There’s nothing on the line during this pickup game against his youth travel squad – except his love of the game.

A heave 3-pointer turns into a no-look pass on the next play. A shifty step back to the left wing comes after that, and myriad drives and floaters soon follow. All were worked on endlessly in Chino Hills, California, then in Geneva, Ohio, with BC Prienai in Lithuania, and even Wollongong, Australia – wherever Ball’s basketball odyssey happened to take him as a teenager.

“He just loves to hoop,” said a Puma rep. “I’m telling you – he just wants to hoop.”

The following night at the Spectrum Center, Ball dropped 31 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists in the Hornets’ home opener win of 123-122 over the Indiana Pacers. He didn’t celebrate the stats on social media afterward. Nor did he post a standard game shot with a clichéd caption like “Great team win!”

Instead, from the players’ parking garage, he posted a photo of himself wearing his outfit on Instagram, where his screen name is @Melo. He was draped in a custom neon green suit of the elongated variety alongside his custom-wrapped, matching neon green Lamborghini Urus of the excessively stunting variety.

The post tallied more than 1.8 million likes. It had earned no less than 50 million impressions by the following morning and was reposted by every tier of basketball-related social media accounts on every platform.

Just 20 years old at the time – and after once launching a signature sneaker under his family’s Big Baller Brand on his 16^th birthday – Ball was stepping into his lane as one of the athletic industry’s most impactful endorsers.

He made his regular season debut that evening in his first signature sneaker with Puma, the MB.01. The vivid “red blast” colorway didn’t remotely match the Hornets’ teal and purple accented uniforms. But it was a perfect fit for someone drawn to showing off the loudest style possible.

He’s also shown love of bright neons, rocks iced-out grills, and 3D UFO chain pendants in the arena entry tunnel. He primarily sticks to a series of emojis for his social post captions. He’s kept his more traditional media sessions about sneakers to a minimum.

“It felt great,” Ball told Andscape following his first game in the Puma MB.01. “You gotta love wearing your own hoop shoes.”

Five weeks later, the shoe smoked out at retail upon its launch. During its first 90 days, more than 120,000 pairs of the MB.01 in four colorways were sold, according to an industry source. Those numbers made the sneaker launch one of the most successful signature debuts in the last decade, ranking with LA Clippers guard Paul George’s Nike PG 1 and Stephen Curry’s first Under Armour model.

Foot Locker was so sure of his star power that it locked in an exclusive distribution agreement for the MB series, showcasing Ball’s latest model in elevated store wall displays and ramping up availability to more than 700 Foot Locker locations across the country.

“It came at the right time for Puma and the right time for our relationship with them. It also came at a perfect time for basketball,” said Jed Berger, who was chief marketing officer of Foot Locker at the time of the interview in March and was named president of Kenneth Cole in August.

“It’s really good for the sneaker industry when basketball is hot. It’s really good for the industry when multiple brands have talent that is doing great,” Berger said. “We have an amazing partnership with Puma, that is really focused around LaMelo.”

When Puma Basketball was relaunched in 2018, after nearly two decades following a canceled deal with Vince Carter in 1999, the first move they made was not to give out a signature shoe.

“The signature model concept construct is a little broken, and it needs to be challenged a little bit,” Puma chief brand officer Adam Petrick said at the time.

The industry has hovered just shy of 20 signature sneakers for NBA players in recent years. Around 75% of the league’s players wear Nike Inc.’s Nike, Jordan, and Converse shoes in games. In 2015, basketball sneaker sales peaked at $1.3 billion but fell a staggering 13.6% by 2017, according to research from the NPD Group.

Overall sales of current performance hoop shoes, not including retro Jordans, have continued to decline since that peak in 2015.

Puma was looking for a different approach. The company formed deals with a mix of top draft picks and veterans with expressive personalities and had one model for each half of the season that all players wore.

That all changed once the brand had a chance to land Ball in 2020.

“[To be] a signature athlete, it’s more than just the basketball player. There’s an aura around them,” said Sallee. “Whether that’s a mysterious aura, or a personality thing. It’s like the whole [Allen] Iverson thing, where he was just so different from everyone else. That’s what makes Melo special. He came in with a life of growing up on social media and a family dynamic that we’ve never seen before with a NBA player. We watched him grow up.”

From a Foot Locker perspective, the familiarity that Ball entered the league with added to their excitement for his eventual series. 

“The basketball community has known about him for years, and they always called him ‘The best Ball.’ There’s been this enthusiasm for him for a long time,” said Berger. “That also allowed for Puma to have a little more confidence to produce a signature so early on. When they thought they had something, they had the confidence to press the accelerator. In this business, you gotta be willing to be wrong if you’re going to get wins.”

That bet paid off.

When Ball laced up his signature sneakers for his first All-Star Game in February, it was the first time Puma shoes had been worn in the NBA’s annual showcase game since 1990, when Detroit Pistons guard Isiah Thomas wore Puma at All-Star Weekend in Miami.

“It was warranted,” said Sallee. “He’s exciting to watch, and he’s a perfect dude to go to an All-Star Game. He’ll just get better. Just like us, it’s just the start for him. I know he’s working on his game, and he’s a true basketball player. He’s not worried about what’s going on off the court as much as he is on the court. He’s doing it right, and we should see him in a lot more All-Star Games.”

Fast-forward to his second signature model, the shoe Sallee designed carries over many of the elements that made the first shoe, designed by Jacob Garcia, a success. The silhouette is essentially the same, and there’s a more integrated approach to celebrating the “world of Melo,” as Sallee calls it. Once again, the launch colorway is a blinding blend of bright red and orange.

Wordmarks and phrases such as “1 of 1,” “Rare,” and “Not From Here” were splashed across panels of the first shoe. The second shoe takes a less literal approach with the words designed into the panels and grip pattern on the bottom.

The second colorway, dubbed Phenom, brings a different approach with a more balanced black-and-blue execution. The cushioning has been upgraded from Nitro Foam embedded in the heel to now being included in the heel and forefoot of the MB.02, a first for Puma in a basketball shoe.

“On the 1, he just wanted all-over, one-color shoes,” said Sallee. “While we have that for the launch color [of the 2], we do have some new finishes for the next releases that are a little bit more dynamic.”

Puma

Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball (left) meets with the Puma design team in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Puma

A look at the design mood board for the MB.02.

Coming out of the Zoom meeting monotony under which the first shoe was designed, Sallee mentions Melo’s vibrant personality and in-person feedback during a series of meetings at the Puma office just outside of Boston and in brainstorm sessions in Charlotte. 

After the first shoe was drafted from the wings of his chest tattoo, the second shoe continued that design language. Ball added more ink over the summer, with that same batch of phrases and red flames taking up some serious real estate across his forearms and hands. 

“His personality is about supreme confidence,” added Sallee. “He’s got his own fashion sense and he likes a lot of things, whether we or anyone else likes them. He’s gonna wear it proudly and make it cool. There’s a lot of things that he embodies and has a lot of characteristics that have just worked out for a signature athlete.”

As he enters his third NBA season, the impact Ball has been able to drive for the overall Puma brand is already being felt.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Berger said of the Foot Locker partnership with Puma on the LaMelo series. “We had high expectations for it, but it’s unbelievably strong.”

“Puma and LaMelo Ball’s MB franchise consistently remains one of our most popular sneaker offerings at Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, and Champs Sports,” said Holly Tedesco, vice president of marketing at Foot Locker Inc. “Since the MB.01 first launched through the recent debut of the MB.02, we have seen tremendous anticipation and interest from our customers.”

That impact has even extended into third-party resell platforms, such as StockX, where Puma hasn’t historically held firm footing in aftermarkets dominated by retro Air Jordan and Adidas Yeezy models.

According to Drew Haines, StockX’s merchandising director of collectibles & sneakers, in just a year’s time, the interest level in Ball has far exceeded other athletes and designers.

In the Silhouettes section under StockX Search Spikes, searches for “Puma MB.01” have jumped by 6,008% year over year. In the platform’s People section, inquiries for “LaMelo Ball” have increased 1,660% year over year. The next highest rising person is sculptor Tom Sachs, whose successful General Purpose collaboration with Nike contributed to a 1,008% spike. Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young is a distant third, with a search increase of 213%.

StockX

The highest-increasingly searched sneakers and personalities on StockX this year.

StockX

“Performance basketball shoes are gaining popularity on StockX, and LaMelo Ball’s MB.01 is very much at the center of this trend,” said Haines. “Only released in December of last year, it’s already become one of the top-selling performance basketball silhouettes on StockX.”

During that same period, Puma has been the No. 2 fastest-growing brand in the sneakers category on StockX.

“This growth was due in large part to the success of LaMelo Ball’s MB.01 sneaker line,” added Haines. “We’ve seen trades of Puma sneakers increase by 415% year over year on StockX, and that simply wouldn’t have happened without the success of the MB.01.”

With two colorways of his second shoe out now and a runway for success ahead, the Puma Hoops category has come a long way since its relaunch in 2018.

Landing Ball was the spark the brand was looking for to carry Puma into the next decade. 

“It was perfect,” said Sallee. “It’s what we needed, and we got it sooner than later, which was nice too. Having an athlete that could push the brand forward and push the category forward, for real. When you’re starting up the basketball category, if you don’t do it right, you could ruin it quick. Melo definitely helped a lot, and his personality is perfect for being the lead dude at a brand. It was a godsend for real.”

McKenzie won six state championships – four in a row at Patrick Henry High School from 2000 to 2003, and two straight at Minneapolis North in 2016 and 2017. But that’s not why he’s a legend. He has the best winning percentage in Minnesota playoff history, sent 31 players to Division I, and is the only coach in state history to win four consecutive titles and multiple championships at two schools. But that’s not his greatest legacy.

“You’re not going to win a championship every year,” McKenzie, 65, told me in a telephone conversation. “If that’s your definition of success, you’re going to end up labeling yourself and a whole lot of other people as a failure.

“My definition of success has been creating champions in the classroom, in the community, in the family – and lastly, on the hardwood. We have to be mindful that less than 1% of all the kids we coach will ever get a paycheck to play basketball. They’re going to have to navigate this thing called life a lot longer than they played a game.

“Are we preparing them for life?”

I first met McKenzie in early 2021, while I was in Minneapolis reporting on the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd. McKenzie invited me to his home, which is a few blocks from both Minneapolis North and some of the areas devastated by the riots of 2020. We talked about how he called each of his players after Floyd’s murder, checking in on them during the subsequent riots, arranging for counseling for those who needed it, and encouraging them to take action by contacting police precinct captains or the mayor. We hardly spoke a word about basketball. When I saw the news last week that McKenzie was stepping down after 42 years in coaching, I felt his city’s loss.

McKenzie represents the coaches who use basketball as it was originally intended: to develop the mind, body and soul of young people. Without these coaches, there is no March Madness or NBA Finals. They are the bedrock of basketball, working for little or no money at the scholastic and community level, drilling the game into the hearts of children who happen to live nearby. And they are especially vital in disadvantaged Black communities like North Minneapolis, where basketball provides structure and motivation for countless youths who will never play in college, let alone the NBA.

In 24 years of coaching high school basketball, McKenzie says every single one of his players graduated on time, in a district that had a 28% Black male graduation rate when he arrived. In 2014, he was the first Black coach inducted into the Minnesota Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. But when I asked McKenzie about high school coaches as unsung heroes, he deflected praise from himself.

“The scary part and part of the reason I decided now was the time to leave is, we saw the impact pro basketball had on college basketball. And now I see what’s happening in college basketball coming into high school. We don’t have an official transfer portal, but you see the same kind of movement. We got kids leaving the state of Minnesota for prep schools in Arizona and New Hampshire and IMG. We just had name, image and likeness [NIL] approved for high school athletes in the state of Minnesota. So high school is the last frontier, but I think all that is coming.”

It’s not that McKenzie doesn’t want top high school players to pursue their best opportunities. It’s that the forces transforming college basketball, a multibillion-dollar business powered by the top 1% of high school players, is trickling down to high school and making it harder to coach in the best interests of the other 99%.

“For high school coaches, it’s not a teacher’s game anymore. It’s almost like you have to be a basketball-preneur. It’s so much about business now,” he said.

McKenzie describes that business as getting paid for games broadcast on TV, which only happens if you bring in top talent, which only happens if you promise NIL money, which means seeking deals through agents and middlemen. That talent is obsessed with posting individual highlights on social media to attract the followers that create NIL money – “sometimes the ball don’t even need to go in the basket,” McKenzie said. And that talent is quick to leave if shots, minutes or the offense are not to their liking. It’s a transformation that, at least in part, has encouraged college coaches such as Jay Wright to retire and made traditional college conferences as antiquated as two-handed set shots.

McKenzie also sees parents’ mania reaching new levels, as they seek immediate returns on pricey fees paid to trainers and weightlifting coaches. “This past season, in my first 20 games our record was 18-2,” he said. “I have a 24-hour rule for parents: Please don’t contact me for 24 hours after a game, give me time to process and reflect. I did not come home one time in my first 20 games without receiving a call or a text about playing time, shots, ‘Could you please clarify what my son’s role is?’ Not one single game. And I’m 18-2.

“At the end of the season, I’m sitting second in the state, I have seven seniors on the team, and I have the parent of a sophomore complaining about her kid’s playing time.”

Basketball is so celebrated in American culture, especially Black culture, that many of us rationalize the negative developments in search of the affirmation of buckets and scholarships. Neglecting life outside basketball becomes “the grind.” Jumping teams at the first sign of adversity becomes “betting on yourself.” Narcissism becomes “branding.” Selfish overdribbling becomes “skill.” Don’t hate the player, we say, hate the game – if you want to compete at a high level, you gotta accept basketball for what it has become.

McKenzie isn’t willing to make that compromise. In retirement, he plans to spend more time with his family and coach other coaches on how to turn boys into men. For those who might call him bitter – or say the times have passed him by – he’s just being honest about the cracks in the foundation of our game.

“Bring Your Game, Not Your Name.”

This motto best describes the culture of New York City basketball. You weren’t bringing just your name to legendary courts such as Rucker Park, The Cage, Dyckman or Gersh Park. You were bringing neighborhood pride and carrying your borough’s honor. Legends were molded and folk stories were born on those basketball battlegrounds, themes that Showtime captured in a documentary debuting Friday in collaboration with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom and Thirty Five Ventures.

NYC Point Gods highlights the history and rich tradition of New York City birthing some of the game’s most iconic point guards. It was players such as Rafer Alston aka “Skip 2 My Lou,” Kenny Anderson, Andre Barrett, Mark Jackson, Stephon Marbury, God Shammgod, Kenny “The Jet” Smith, Dwayne “Pearl” Washington and Kemba Walker, just to name a few, who revolutionized the way the game was played forever.

“New York is a place of survival. You always got to figure out how to get better because of the competition,” Shammgod said of his experience growing up hooping in New York City during the early 1990s.

The inventor of the deadliest crossover move the game has ever seen named after himself, Shammgod battled elite competition such as Felipe López, Richie Parker, Kareem Reid and Marbury weekly. It forced him to bring his A-game regardless of the tournament or league. His scoring ability, meshed with his tricky playground ballhandling skills, were frequently the talk of the town during his playing days at La Salle Academy. Teaming up with Metta Sandiford-Artest, formerly Ron Artest, Shammgod dazzled the crowd and scouts and became a McDonald’s All American, something he had his eyes set on after seeing Harlem legend Reid achieve it in 1994.

But what helped put the pro scouts and executives on notice was when Shammgod led Providence to the Elite Eight in the 1997 NCAA tournament. He dropped 23 points while dishing out five assists in a tough loss to a University of Arizona squad led by Mike Bibby. Following that performance, the Washington Wizards drafted Shammgod with the 46th pick in the second round of the 1997 NBA draft.

“Back then, no one was afraid to compete against each other. At that time, that’s what made NYC hoops better than any other region in the country,” said Edgar Burgos, one of the documentary’s producers.

Burgos, a Harlem native with more than two decades of film experience, covered and captured New York City streetball for the NBA and MSG Network. From watching Washington’s showmanship to Anderson’s dominance on the court as an undersized guard at Molloy High School, Burgos saw from afar how much talent was brewing in the Big Apple.

“In order to be a true NYC point guard, you had to be tough, willing to fight and have a certain winning swagger towards you,” Burgos added.

Outside looking in, people would see this as a different level of hell, with no breaks given while being battle-tested against elite competition daily. But if you were a New York-bred hooper, this was the norm as rivalries were born at an early age.

Before he won championships in China and put up 20 points and eight assists a night in the NBA, Coney Island’s Marbury learned this feeling at the tender age of 12. Following a bloodline of brothers who made a name for themselves in New York City high school hoops, Marbury played at the famed Abraham Lincoln High School. His impact on New York City basketball was so significant that it has been rumored that movie director Spike Lee’s He Got Game was based on Marbury’s journey to NBA greatness.

Like every era that dies down, a new one arises, opening the eyes of a new generation with star power that shakes up how the game’s played. Among those new floor generals was Barrett, an undersized point guard from the Bronx.

“It started when we were young. I used to always hear about players like Omar [Cook], this kid from Brooklyn who was playing for BQE at the time. I played at Kips Bay with Kenny Satterfield, but everyone knew about me coming from the Bronx and Omar coming out of Brooklyn,” said Barrett, a former Seton Hall Pirates sensation whose teammate Satterfield went on to have an outstanding collegiate career at the University of Cincinnati.

Barrett was a McDonald’s All American at legendary national powerhouse Rice High School and part of an elite trio of New York City point guards in the Class of 2000, all ranked Top 25 nationally. Barrett, Queens native Taliek Brown and Brooklyn’s Cook would often run into one another in some of the city’s most elite tournaments, which gave hoop politicians something to talk about.

“I would hear things like, this kid from Brooklyn, Omar Cook. He can pass the ball, he dominates the game without scoring and all this stuff. I was like, man, I’m not trying to hear about all this stuff,” Barrett said and chuckled while discussing his early rivalry with the Brooklyn guard.

“Also, while at Kips Bay, I would go out to Queens to play in Kenny Anderson’s tournament in LeFrak City and that’s Taliek’s home/projects he grew up playing basketball at. Anytime I’d come there, people knew I was a kid from the Bronx. They always said, ‘You nice, but we got a guy from LeFrak [Brown] that’s nice, too.’ ”

Brown lit up the stat sheet at St. John’s Prep, averaging 22.5 points and 6.6 assists. Jim Calhoun recruited Brown to UConn, where he was captain when the team won the 2004 NCAA national championship, the second in school history.

The competition Brown endured created a buzz for himself in the city and prepared him to prove naysayers wrong about holding his own as an undersized guard.

While some kids spent the weekend watching Saturday morning cartoons or cutting the grass, some who were competitively playing basketball in New York City were figuring out how to break full-court presses and traps as early as 8 a.m.

“Mike Boynton and I, someone who I was playing with since I was 9, 10 years old, started to play in leagues around the city,” Cook told Andscape. “We would wake up around 8 in the morning then travel to the Bronx to play in UDC.”

Cook and Barrett tested their skills against elite competition in some of New York City’s most legendary leagues such as Is8, Soul in the Hole, UDC, Citywide, Young World, ProStyle and Nike Swoosh. Rather than individual stats dictating who was the best in a one-on-one matchup, matchups were won when your team was taking championship pictures with trophies more than 6 feet tall.

Players such as Louisville Cardinals legend Russ Smith, Drexel sharpshooter Chris Fouch, former Jordan Brand All-American Omari Lawrence, NBA All-Star Walker, University of Virginia standout Sylven Landesberg, former Florida Gators sharpshooter Erving Walker and NBA veteran Lance Stephenson forced you to be prepared and leave it all on the court. The Gauchos, Riverside Church, Long Island Lightning, Team Next, NY Panthers, Brooklyn USA, S. Carter Elite and Juice All-Stars, to name a few, made the AAU circuit pay close attention to the scene in the Northeast region.

It played a major part in why New York City was the melting pot for Division I men’s coaches to recruit, with more than 100 players from New York City on Division I rosters this year. It’s the most out of any region in the country.

Cook came out of Ingersoll Houses project in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, also home to Wizards forward Taj Gibson and Seattle Storm guard Epiphanny Prince of the WNBA. Cook credits most of his skills and intangibles to watching the greats who came before him, such as his older brother, Shameek Cook, legendary streetball player Ed “Booger” Smith and NBA legend Bernard King.

“For me, when I was young, it started with Bernard King, who at the time played for the Knicks. He’s the person I saw coming out of my projects, so I model my game and my mean streak after him,” Cook said.

“I was lucky to see Ed ‘Booger’ Smith at an early age. At the time, he was a celebrity, showing off his skills in movies and I used to watch him play pickup ball in regular street clothes. His handles were insane and court vision was unbelievable. I saw him roll the ball full court, picked it up and made a pass for a layup and I thought that was crazy.”

Ed Smith received plenty of praise after his debut in the classic hoops documentary, Soul in the Hole. He would go on to make a name for himself at Rucker Park while being on the cover of an issue of Sports Illustrated — a rare honor for streetball players.

Cook went on to have a successful freshman campaign for St. John’s University. Starting at point guard, he averaged 15.3 points while distributing 8.7 assists a night for a squad coached by Mike Jarvis.

Despite short stints in the NBA and the National Basketball Development League, Cook became a household name overseas — becoming a FIBA EuroCup Challenge champion and a two-time FIBA Champions League winner before making an unplanned retirement announcement during a postgame interview in May.

Some of New York City’s legendary point guards who are no longer playing are ready to share their knowledge with a new generation of hungry guards. Shammgod joined the Dallas Mavericks as a player development coach in 2019 and Cook desires to become an NBA coach.

Cook met with coaches and executives in Las Vegas during NBA summer league this month and shared a moment with ESPN analyst Richard Jefferson, who paused an interview to congratulate Cook on his retirement.

“He appreciates the vulnerability I displayed in that [retirement] video,” Cook said.

“My family and friends know who I am, but the young generation is not familiar with me. So, for someone like RJ, who is an analyst on NBA on ESPN, to stop his interview to acknowledge me meant a lot.”

As Cook embarks on a new career chapter, the former Red Storm great finds himself part of a trend.

Fresh off coaching his own squad in the Rucker Park regional in The Basketball Tournament, Alston provides his game education to the youth while positioning them for success in his RA Elite program. Former NBA greats such as Jackson and Kenny Smith continue to be fan favorites with their witty personalities and ability to school NBA enthusiasts through their play-by-play and postgame commentary. Rod Strickland, who is also featured in the documentary, is the newest head coach for the Long Island University men’s basketball team, where he has his eyes set on leading the Northeast Conference squad back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2018.

The knowledge these legends are dropping to the next generation of hoopers such as Jermel “Mel Mel” Thomas, Johnuel “Boogie” Fland or Tai Turnage will help keep the legacy alive.

Welcome to New York City, where your game speaks louder than your name. Just ask the point gods.