“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.”

Another unique element of the event is that it happens simultaneously in three cities, led by satellite HBCU Alumni Alliance groups in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington. Living up to their motto of “Run for you. Run for them. Run for us!” each branch combines the funds from registration fees, donations and sponsorships to fund scholarships for local HBCU students.

HBCU Alumni Alliance CEO Dan Ford, an alum of North Carolina A&T State University, created the event in Atlanta in 2007 after Marck Dorvil, a fellow alliance member, expressed disappointment that he hadn’t seen many Black people participate in the city’s flagship running event, the Peachtree Road Race.

“He came to us asking how we can get more people of color involved in these organized runs,” Ford said, since the assumption then was that Black people don’t run. “And we said, ‘Well, what if we did our own organized run?’ But you gotta think, 17 years ago, asking people of color to get up on a Saturday morning to go out to a park and run, and pay for it, was unheard of. People said it was the dumbest idea they ever heard.”

There have been essays, books, studies, TV series, podcasts and other discussions about how Black people weren’t interested in running. Among the reasons for the lack of interest are a fear of “running while Black,” and thus being exposed to racial harassment and violence, the cost of entering races and the safety and walkability of Black neighborhoods. Those barriers mean Black people don’t see one another running, giving them less motivation to try it. Add this to the belief that running doesn’t hold the same cultural cachet as basketball or football, and the result is many African Americans sitting on the sideline and missing out on many of the reported mental and physical benefits of running.

In creating the run/walk, the HBCU Alliance wanted to change these attitudes, but they almost proved their naysayers right. According to Ford, the inaugural race in 2007 at Grant Park in Southeast Atlanta drew only 250 participants. For many, 250 Black people gathered at the park is a certified function. However, that number looks like a failure considering Atlanta is home to four HBCUs, with extended family via alums and Black Greek-letter organizations. The alliance increased its promotion, and the following years saw incremental improvements as word spread. Local running clubs such as Pretty Girls Run and Black Men Run started bringing their crews, but there were still small numbers of runners.

Not yet able to hire professional race event consultants, volunteer organizers struggled with providing basics such as T-shirts, bibs and even proof of registration. However, people kept paying to sign up, eventually generating enough income to pay professional organizers. Ford and his staff introduced the Alumni Row tailgate experience, where schools set up their own tents, and the ones who raised the most money received preferred placement.

In the early 2010s, Ford added a 10K race to attract more serious runners. These decisions initially paid off as attendance increased to 2,500, forcing the race to switch locations to the larger Piedmont Park in the densely populated Midtown area. The move created higher expenses because there were more streets to cross, resulting in higher costs for permits and police officers. As a result, Ford kept the course in the park, a decision he said was a disaster. One year, he even tried to appease runners who complained about running in the morning heat and held the event at night, which was another mistake. In 2015, seeing the numbers declining, Ford decided to cut the 10K, added vendors to the tailgate and shifted the focus to attracting more walkers. Registration has increased every year since.

“You already know how we bring the smoke when things don’t go right, and people had every right to be upset,” said Ford, noting the only years they saw less participation was in 2020 and 2021, when they switched to a virtual option because of the coronavirus pandemic. “Some of our processes were not great experiences, but they stuck with us.”

“One of my first races that I ever did was the HBCU 5K when I first started running,” said Tes Sobomehin Marshall, a respected Atlanta race director and founder of The Race, the nation’s largest Black-owned and operated half-marathon. She has participated in the HBCU 5K as a runner, volunteer and vendor. “It’s literally like the Black runner homecoming in Atlanta.”

Even as the Atlanta HBCU Alumni Alliance was still figuring things out, a demand grew for similar experiences in cities with a high HBCU graduate presence. The first group to create a franchise race was the DC Metro HBCU Alumni Alliance in 2013. Their race was held on the campus of Howard University and stayed there until 2019, moving to the Black-owned St. James Sports Complex in Springfield, Virginia, after a change in leadership. Hearing the negative feedback about the 14-mile drive, they moved the race back to Washington this year and will start at MLB’s Nationals Park. The Philadelphia HBCU Alumni Alliance was created in 2020, and it hosted its first race virtually in 2021. The group currently holds its race across the Delaware River at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, New Jersey.

“Doing all of the races on the same day is us working together and amplifying it because we recognize that the bigger the stone you throw into the pond, the bigger ripples you make,” Ford said.

The event also serves as a way to bring together even more alums from surrounding areas.

“We’ve got three different Hampton University alumni chapters in our consortium from Virgina, Maryland and D.C.,” DC Metro HBCU Alumni Association President Tanye Coleman said. “But in our alumni row, we only have one tent for Hampton University so they’re not competing with each other. They’re all getting together.”

One of the race’s primary goals is simply to get more Black people active. However, the Atlanta course is certified by the USA Track & Field governing body, so the race still attracts competitive runners. The times are official and can be used to qualify for other races such as the Peachtree Road Race on July Fourth, and many runners use the Atlanta HBCU 5K to tune up for it. This includes non-Black runners who show up for an easy win to pad their stats.

“They were like, oh, that’s a certified race so I’m gonna come out here and just bring the smoke,” said Ford, who says the event is open to all, including Black people who didn’t attend HBCUs. “There were years when I wondered what’s happening right now. We’re giving out medals and ain’t nobody looking like us. But over a period of time, our gazelles started coming out.”

“There’s competition out there with some very good runners,” said Delaware State University alum Shannon Booker, who leads Atlanta running group Movers & Pacers. Booker moved to Atlanta in 2017 and said running in the race has helped him connect with other HBCU alums and Black people in the city. He’s been a top finisher each year he’s participated and won the race in 2022. “For me, it’s just a good time because, unfortunately in a lot of the races I enter, I don’t see many of us, let alone at the front of the pack.”

“I keep telling people, hey, anyone can participate, not just your alums,” said Philadelphia HBCU Alliance president Gregory T. Wilson. “Everybody’s money is green when it comes to supporting the mission.”

Supporting the mission is also a competition. When people sign up for the race, they can register as a member of one of their local alumni associations. As the totals increase, they can also see which schools are raising the most scholarship money, motivating them to spread the word and get more people registered on their behalf. People who don’t plan on participating physically to “exercise their wallet” and donate separately. HBCU Alliance members also use professional connections to get corporate sponsors to support the cause. The results are that some HBCU students get a few hundred dollars to buy books, others receive larger grants from corporate sponsors, and the alumni associations receive a cut of the money they raised on their own, which can be used at their discretion.

“We’re not taking any proxies,” Ford said. “You have to be here, because we want them to experience like this is your HBCU family. So you can’t send your auntie to come get your check.”

“I’ve used that money to help me buy books and a laptop, which I really needed coming into college because the one I already had was definitely rundown,” said Howard University student Sydney Wynn, who has won the DC Metro Alliance scholarship twice. “People are always looking for big scholarships that will give you complete full rides, but people don’t realize that applying for scholarships like this really adds up.”

HBCU alums donating and registering also helps since historically Black universities have been underfunded for decades. Since 1987, HBCUs have been underfunded by the government by at least $12 billion compared to predominantly white institutions. A 2023 study by research groups Candid and ABFE found that large U.S. foundations decreased their HBCU funding by 30% between 2002 and 2019. However, President Joe Biden announced that his administration has invested $16 billion in HBCUs over the last three years.

“You never know politically what type of funding will be available,” Wilson warned, emphasizing that it’s still up to HBCU alums and alliances like this one to do their part. “You’ve heard horrific stories on how many institutions have been shortchanged by the state from getting their federal allotted dollars. There’s hundreds of millions of dollars that schools were supposed to get, but they didn’t.”

While HBCUs may still be miles behind predominantly white universities in funding, efforts like the HBCU 5K Run/Walk are helping close the gap.

As one-third of the pioneering production trio Organized Noize with Patrick “Sleepy” Brown and Ray Murray, Wade orchestrated the groundwork for Atlanta’s ongoing three decades-long run of relevance in hip-hop and Black music. With Murray and Brown serving as the musical heart and soul of the team, Wade was the voice of the operation, acting as the de facto glue, nucleus and leader for Organized Noize. While their predecessors, including Bobby Brown, L.A. Reid, Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri, showed that Atlanta was fertile ground for polished hit-making, Wade and Organized Noize were instrumental in revealing what living in the city was actually like in the post-Civil Rights era, giving natives a sense of pride and transplants a reason to come.

Similar to how DJ Kool Herc’s electrical innovation birthed hip-hop in the Bronx, Wade literally molded a sound from Southwest Atlanta, Georgia’s red clay, converting a crawlspace in his mother’s unfinished basement into a studio affectionately known as “The Dungeon” that became the headquarters for the larger Dungeon Family collective that included Parental Advisory, Outkast, Goodie Mob, Big Rube, Witchdoctor, Cool Breeze, Backbone, Joi Gilliam and second generation progeny Killer Mike, Future, Bubba Sparxxx and others. During hip-hop’s growth spurt in the 1990s, as East Coast producers borrowed from jazz influences and West Coast producers relied on funk, Organized Noize blazed new trails (simultaneously with producers like Pimp C of UGK), introducing soulful elements akin to Curtis Mayfield, using live instrumentation instead of sampling, crafting the sonic identity that would become known as Southern hip-hop.

“We always looked at New York as the father and Los Angeles as the mother and we were the child that came from it,” explained Wade in a 2022 interview on the Questlove Supreme podcast. “That neglect was enough to figure it out on your own.”

Like many Atlantans, Wade spoke through body language fostered by the city’s dance and rollerskating cultures. So even when you got lost in what he was saying through his jittery accent, Wade’s flailing limbs, darting hand gestures, dramatic facial expressions, and intense head nods sent whatever message he wanted to convey. Non-verbal messages were also sent with intentional fashion choices like proudly rocking Atlanta Hawks and Falcons gear even when the teams were struggling and frequently flashing his “Dungeon Family” forearm tattoos, a gesture reminiscent of a b-boy stance, but also a bold pledge of allegiance that spoke louder than the trend of wearing a diamond-encrusted logo on a chain.

Even as Wade went up and down the totem pole of demand and popularity in the music industry, he maintained the same grounded nature. When Organized Noize had songs like TLC’s “Waterfalls” and En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go (Love)” on the charts, you could still catch Wade near his Headland & Delowe stomping grounds. Friends, associates, and clients alike can share stories about Wade’s hospitable nature, offering everything from a smoke to a box of wings to a place to sleep off both. Whether you earned $1 million or worked at Family Dollar, you likely wound up with his number in your phone if you had more than two long conversations with him. If he really rocked with you, he excitedly greeted you every time he saw you, as if it was the first time he had seen you in years. A man about town, you could run into Wade anywhere from a grocery store to a local “Madden” tournament, making him one of the most accessible vessels in a city where people tend to seclude themselves as they become more successful and retreat even more when the mainstream media spotlight moves on from them.

Though he never used his role to rap or sing alongside artists he helped produce, Wade’s unmistakable voice bookends Atlanta hip-hop’s vast musical history. He’s the first person you hear talking on the intro to Outkast’s 1993 debut breakthrough single “Player’s Ball” before Big Boi or Andre 3000 even started rapping their verses. Thirty years later, he provided the opening monologue on Killer Mike’s 2023 Grammy-winning album Michael, setting off the momentous opening track “Down By Law.”

Current Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens often says that the city is a group project, promoting the idea that everyone must work together for the city to thrive. Rico Wade embodied that in his approach to producing music, building community, instilling pride and creating a sound that put the city on the globe.

“I don’t ever not want to be a part,” said Wade in the 2016 documentary The Art of Organized Noize when speaking on the Dungeon Family’s splintering and remolding over the years. “We are all great but we needed each other at one time, and we always will.”

Rest in Black man’s heaven.

“We still stand in line for releases, do raffle tickets, everything,” Thomas Rena, one of the handful of people who had been camping out since midnight, said. “This process is still a big part of the Dallas community and how we get shoes to this day.”

He paused. “But I can’t remember a player [here] actually having a release like this.”

Anta

Shoppers line up in front of Sneaker Politics in Dallas in anticipation of the release of the Anta KAI 1 sneakers.

Anta

A pop-up basketball court was created by Anta and Sneaker Politics for the release of Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving's signature shoe in Dallas on March 6.

Anta

Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving (center) on the court surrounded by young fans at Sneaker Politics in Dallas on March 6.

A snapshot of what “like this” looked like: The Main Street block between Malcolm X Boulevard and Crowdus Street where Sneaker Politics is located was sectioned off for an all-day block party with live DJs, live painting, food and a pop-up basketball court. The storefront was plastered with Anta and KAI 1 branding, the shoe was displayed inside and miniature 3D versions were given out as gifts. At nightfall, the scene was illuminated by amethyst fluorescent lights, giving it the feel of a vibranium cave.

Mavericks players have had sneaker moments and shoes worth hitting the store for in the past. Then-guard Jason Kidd’s Air Zoom models were mid-’90s darlings, and then-forward Jamal Mashburn put Fila on the basketball map around the same time. Former forward Michael Finley is an OG Jordan Brand member, and current guard Luka Dončić has two signature shoes.

Irving’s Anta KAI 1 rollout hits a little differently.

“I’m really honored and grateful, a lot of gratitude in my heart right now for everybody pulling up making this a true celebration,” Irving told a group of Anta and Sneaker Politics employees before the first customers were allowed inside the store. Irving also sold a symbolic first pair to his children. “They stopped the whole block for us. So I definitely wanna make my rounds and say thank you to as many people as I can to make sure I show the love back in return. Especially to people waiting out there since midnight, which is crazy.”

He paused to take a breath and made the crossed-finger gesture he often flashes in photos and public appearances. “We’re here, man. The tribe’s here.”

The shoe is a group project between Irving and Anta’s team of design director Jared Subawon, color design director Shaneika Warden, and art director Astin Davis, who collectively bring more than 20 years of experience to the studio. Subawon’s aerodynamic design is meant to complement Irving’s unorthodox fluidity. The add-ons are derived from his code of “strength, agility, focus, and speed,” which are represented through the African-inspired symbols created by Davis for the design.

“Back in the ’90s, basically every single basketball shoe out, you could rock off or on court,” Subawon said. He delivered the popular Evo Knit 2 and a lifestyle shoe for Meek Mill when he was a footwear designer at Puma. “I kind of missed that type of style in basketball where everything now just seems so performance-based. I wanted to make it seem like anybody can rock it at any given time.”

In the debut colorway, titled “Artist on Court,” the ideas are given an extra glow by a fluorescent and purple color palette developed by Warden that mirrors Irving’s personality.

Anta

The Anta KAI 1 "Artist on Court" colorway has a purple base with pink, gold and cream accents.

Anta

The Anta KAI 1 "Artist on Court" has graphics that depict Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving's Native American roots.

Anta

Anta art director Astin Davis used African-inspired symbols to depict inspiration and encouragement.

“We know that purple represents royalty in a European sense, but in other cultures, it represents mysticism,” Warden said. She held leadership positions in color design at Jordan Brand and Under Armour. “We talk about Black boy joy and Black girl magic, so I felt like it was the perfect color representation to mimic how magical Kyrie moves on the court and how he thinks off the court.”

Irving’s Native American heritage is celebrated from front to back as the toe box is accented with embroidery resembling a headdress. The heel tab has a hanging feather accessory like the one he often wears on his right ear. The Anta arrow molding flows into the shoe’s upper, and the outsole has his mother’s name, Elizabeth Irving, etched into the rubber.

“That’s what Kyrie really wanted,” Davis said. He created Irving’s new “Enlightened Warrior” logo shield, which is emblazoned on the tongue and accompanying apparel. “He told us he wanted every piece of the shoe to be artwork.”

As Kyrie often speaks of belonging to a tribe, it makes sense that the three designers who built the shoe are an extension of a design family with decades of personal and professional ties.

In 2017, footwear design veteran Sean O’Shea left his position as head of design for running and training at Puma to become general manager of Anta’s U.S. operations. He was tasked with building the company’s presence in America from the ground up. He convinced his college friend and designer Geoff Deas to come on board as creative director. One of his next hires was Subawon, a Miami native who went to high school with fellow designers Guercy Eugene and Frantz Mondesir, who later followed him from Puma to Anta. All three of them attended Columbus College of Art & Design and then transferred to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where they met Davis, also an alum and former Puma co-worker. Bringing it full circle, Anta design director Duane Lawrence spoke at a career day in Miami, which inspired Subawon, Eugene and Mondesir to pursue design.

While familiarity has helped the team work together, they wanted to avoid it when making the shoe. With eight models of sneakers attached to Irving’s name with Nike, Anta’s design team faced the challenge of creating something new for a recognizable figure while trying to increase their presence in sneaker design.

Anta

Anta design director Jared Subawon sought to create a sneaker than could perform on the court and was stylish off the court. Anta

Anta

Anta creative director Geoff Deas (left) and general manager Sean O'Shea pose with the KAI 1 at Nice Kicks in San Francisco on Mar. 9.

Anta

Left to right: Anta design director Jared Subawon, color design director Shaneika Warden, and art director Astin Davis pose with the KAI 1 at Extra Butter in New York City on Mar. 7.

“I was definitely worried about that at first,” Subawon said, noting that his original design had triangles on the midsole that resembled prior Kyrie sneakers. “So we really had to sit back and figure out how the shoe is going to stand out and make people forget to the point there is no comparison. That was really tough.”

“It was like bringing in a new presidency,” Davis said. “You gotta get rid of what the other person did and bring in your new stuff. Because the last thing you want to do is have anybody saying you bit off of this or that. We started from ground zero.”

“Everything was created alongside each other,” Warden said. ”That’s why there’s a harmonious feel to the shoe.”

If there’s anything Irving sought in a new shoe deal, it was harmony.

Irving’s relationship with Nike was as smooth as his handles for seven years. The Kyrie 1 through 7 models ranked high in sales and popularity with children and NBA players. However, Irving’s relationship with Nike unraveled during a tumultuous stretch between July 2021 and December 2022. First, there was the comment on Instagram where he blasted the company for allegedly releasing his Kyrie 8 shoe without his consent, calling the shoe “trash.” In November 2022, his contract was suspended following the backlash from Irving posting a tweet with a link to an antisemitic film. He and Nike mutually parted ways in December 2022, a year before the contract was set to expire.

With Irving still playing at an All-Star level, he instantly became one of the most coveted sneaker free agents. There were reports that he was in talks with Black-owned brand Sia Collective, and he was spotted wearing NBA veteran Langston Galloway’s Ethics the Brand during a shootaround. Ultimately, nothing materialized, likely due to those companies’ inability to scale production to match Irving’s global presence, performance needs, and his team’s capabilities.

“We talked to a ton of independent brands and realized that there’s a lot that we didn’t know and understand,” said Irving’s agent and stepmother, Shetellia Riley Irving. “It costs a lot to do a shoe. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially a performance shoe. Design is one thing, but so is understanding the orthopedics of the foot and making sure that we just have the right people.”

“I’m looking for a home where I can build a huge marketplace and I can have some ownership and that takes time to build,” Irving said of his ideal next sneaker deal during a news conference in December 2022. “I’m definitely not going to go back into a similar contract that I was in or any similar situation or circumstance that I was in at the other brand.”

O’Shea figured he had the home Irving was looking for.

While Anta had made some ripples by signing a handful of NBA players, including four-time NBA champion Klay Thompson, the chance to catch Irving would help them make a bigger splash.

“Geoff and I were just walking down the street to the gym at lunchtime to shoot hoops, and we saw on social media kind of what had just happened with [Irving] with the other brand,” O’Shea said, saying that he heard multiple dozens of brands reached out to Irving. “So we sat down immediately at the first table we could stumble across, and we called his team and let him know we’re still here.”

In July 2023, the sides agreed to a five-year deal and the company named Irving its chief creative officer, where he will “also seek to recruit basketball players, independent brands, influential figures in pop culture, artists, musicians, pioneers in environmentalism, trailblazers in humanitarianism and designers to also collaborate with him to create additional product lines under Kyrie’s signature line” according to a news release.

“It felt a little surreal this summer being able to negotiate a shoe deal of the magnitude I have,” Irving said in September 2023, stressing that his management team emphasized having creative control in his next deal. “I can basically sign my peers and also negotiate favorable terms that I know the industry is not offering anybody else.”

Deas suspects that seeing his peers in lead design roles also played a big role.

“When we were courting him, he saw our team, a majority Black design studio, that had to play some part,” Deas said about why Irving may have chosen the company. He also credits Anta’s vertical business model, where owning their factories and 7,000-plus stores in China made it more capable of creating and moving products and turning this shoe around in just six months. “He felt comfortable. Music was pumping, people were talking smack. It was like a real familiar environment for him to absorb and take in.”

“I think that helped, but it was the passion,” Riley Irving said. “I think we saw a group of people who were superpassionate about what they were building even before there was Kyrie. This was more than a job. They were bought into what they were really trying to build at the end of the day.”

O’Shea wanted to give everyone a shot at designing Irving’s Anta debut. Every in-house designer on the U.S. and China teams submitted designs, including himself. With roughly 16 submissions to choose from, Irving chose Subawon’s design.

“I was actually blown away because I thought he’d take some time to digest them all and probably come back to us and say, ‘ Maybe this part of this design can work with this design,’ ” Subawon said. “But he said, ‘No, that’s it right there. Congratulations, these are my signatures.’ It took me a minute for it to really kick in and register.”

“Every shoe was absolutely phenomenal, so it was a hard choice,” Riley Irving said. “What made him choose this silhouette versus that silhouette? I can’t answer that. I just know that I was like, not one shoe was a bad shoe. If you think the KAI 1s are sick, wait until you get into the 2s. It’s gonna turn everything upside down.”

“Geoff and I want to build them up so that they’re the next Virgil Abloh, the next Jerry Lorenzo, the next Salehe Bembury,” O’Shea said of the design team. “These are some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever met, and they deserve the opportunity to show the world what they’re going to do creatively.”

Within hours of the 6 p.m. launch, most sizes were sold out, with some customers inquiring about shoes on display. Simultaneously, Anta’s social media feeds were bombarded with complaints that the website’s stock sold out in seconds.

“Sneakerheads have always wanted to appear like they’re looking for something different on their feet, like they want something nobody else has,” said Weartesters sneaker reviewer and Dallas-Fort Worth resident Bryan Hinkle, who was one of the first to walk out of Sneaker Politics with a pair of Kai 1s. He emphasized that he’s been a fan of Anta’s design team members for years and this is not the first shoe he bought from the company. “Anta right now is unique. Nobody’s heard of them in the U.S., for the most part. There is a consumer movement out there that’s kind of just tired of those [retro] designs and looking for something else.” With a restock likely and more colorways and apparel dropping in the future, Irving and Anta will give people plenty of incentive to stand in line or wait online for sneakers again.

The beer features African Queen hops imported from South Africa and paired with New Zealand strata hops, a popular choice among many craft breweries for its complex, dank aroma profile. There are also several stone fruit notes mixed with guava and citrus. The combination gives drinkers a less bitter, more juicy, flavorful experience, making the brew more inviting to people who don’t drink beer often and those who drink it frequently.

“We all just bounced around some ideas of how we want the mouthfeel to be and what notes we want to to be accentuated,” said Mario Benjamin, co-founder of Hella Coastal. “And then also, make it approachable at the same time.”

OP Beam was debuted on Feb. 7 at the Kings’ game against the Detroit Pistons. Fans heard about the collaboration during timeouts via interviews on the jumbotron and were invited to visit the section where the beer was sold.

“What’s dope is a lot of people who came over told us they’re not even really beer drinkers, they just came because they looked and saw it up on the jumbotron and was like, ‘oh, let’s go over that section and see what they’re talking about,’ ” said Kevin Irvin, co-founder of Draught Season. “They bought the beer, came back and let us know what they thought.”

The Kings lost the game, but the beer was a win.

“It was also important to be able to educate and give some understanding of what Beer Is Black History means,” Irvin said.

The idea for Beer Is Black History was born months after Draught Season’s launch in October 2020. Draught Season Initially sought to give craft beer lovers some clothing and accessories to express themselves, akin to how sports fans have the choice of dozens of brands. Their first drops featured trucker hats, T-shirts and hoodies with their logo and beer-inspired slogans. But as February 2021 approached, they wanted to make a statement for Black History Month.

“I started doing research and I came across the whole story of how the first known recipe for beer was created in 3900 B.C. in Mesopotamia by Sumerian Black women,” said Draught Season co-founder Branden Peters. “I was like, oh s—, because I had no idea this was a thing. We should tell this story, we should spread this message.”

Some historians argue that beer originated with the Sumerians, who were Black because they referred to themselves as “black-headed,” while others say they were North Africans who had black hair. Reports also say beer was brewed throughout Africa before the recipe emerged in Mesopotamia. While all of this may be true, Penn Museum biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern summed it up best when he told The Washington Post that the first beer probably came from Africa because that’s where the first people were.

“We had to have that real conversation about putting this in people’s face and not tiptoeing around it,” said Irvin. “If we’re going to wave that flag, we have to be willing to be bold with it.”

The statement was well-received and spread fast. The initial capsule collection featured a design by Atlanta-based multi-hyphenate (“International DJ/Event curator/MC/Writer/Producer,” according to his Instagram profile) Sean Falyon and was accompanied by a lookbook featuring Grammy Award-winning rapper Killer Mike. The release led to the Beer Is Black History campaign being introduced to Black-owned breweries nationwide that also believed in the message. In February 2022, Draught Season collaborated with three Black-owned breweries to drop a “Beer Is Black History” brew, including one with Hella Coastal.

“Once we met up and started communicating, it just felt like these the homies that we knew, but we didn’t know we knew,” said Benjamin, who was introduced to Draught Season by longtime craft beer reporter and expert Dennis “Ale Sharpton” Byron. Draught Season and Hella Coastal’s first collaboration, Hyped Out IPA, was released to great fanfare, and its can art was recognized by USA Today as one of the 10 best of 2022. “Everything was on the same page and we knew that we wanted the same goal, which was to break down those barriers of what Black ownership in craft beer looks like.”

Right now, Black ownership in craft beer looks nearly invisible. According to the National Black Brewers Association, African-American-owned breweries make up less than 1% of the roughly 10,000 craft breweries operating in the United States, despite making up 12% of beer drinkers.

“We don’t see enough of us in the space,” said Benjamin, “so people will start to feel like it’s not really a place for us. So I think it’s really just trying to create that lane and also have the resources available so that, you know, African American men and women, and the nonbinary can have access to those same resources. But there’s also a lot of allyship needed to help us get to that next level and really breaking down that barrier and the perception of beer only being for the white guy with the beer gut and the beard. No, it’s for all of us and there’s a lot of pieces behind it that you learn.”

“When people just shut Black and Brown brewers out, they’re just missing out on what could be,” said Rodg Little, co-owner of Oak Park Brewing. “With different cultures come different flavors. I know from experience with the different cultures that we work with, I’ve had some phenomenal beers.” 

Since most NBA players and many of their fans are Black, it would make sense for more Black-owned companies to have partnerships with NBA teams. If collaborations like OP Beam can be successful, maybe it won’t be such an anomaly.

“Having ‘Beer is Black History’ front and center in the Golden 1 Center and having it on jumbotron is the blackest thing to hit the NBA since Craig Hodges wore a dashiki to the White House,” in 1991, Peters said.

“This is a contact sport,” Wallace said, sitting in his SUV in Local Green’s parking lot, taking phone calls, keeping laptops open, and ordering eco-friendly disposables and other supplies to keep the restaurant’s inventory intact. “The restaurant business is a business of 10,000 little small things.”

Multitasking isn’t entirely new to Wallace, though. Before his dive into the food industry, he was known as a rapper and songwriter who helped build Sho’Nuff Records with rapper Jazze Pha, where his pen game contributed to hit songs such as “Goodies” by Ciara, “Get It Shawty” by Lloyd, and tracks for Nelly, CeeLo Green, Too $hort and Jeezy. His voice has also been on Atlanta radio every weekday since 2005 as the man behind the “It’s 6 O’Clock” intro for hip-hop DJ and radio host Greg Street’s long-running evening slot on V-103.

His connection to hip-hop inspires most of the food on Local Green’s menu. You’ll find tacos named after rapper Andre 3000, smoothies, and sandwiches named after Goodie Mob songs and T.I. albums. But beef is one hip-hop byproduct you won’t find at Local Green — 80% of the menu is plant-based and geared to a pescatarian and vegetarian diet.

“Nutrition is our first inspiration,” Wallace said, noting that every offering is created with the recommended daily nutritional value in mind, and all of the sauces are made in-house. “We start out with that and say, ‘OK, now how can we make this taste the best?’ It’s just like music, it’s a very spiritual process.”

Living and working in Atlanta’s prosperous entertainment industry often makes for poor eating habits. Late nights in the studio or club usually lead to eating at whatever 24-hour diner or drive-thru is still open when the party’s over. So, as Big Zak was collecting publishing checks and platinum plaques, he was also packing on the pounds. At his largest, he weighed 315 pounds, wore 4XL-size clothing, and battled sleep apnea.

“You couldn’t tell me nothing, though,” he said. “I was still fresh, still a playa, so I didn’t care. I didn’t see myself like that. I didn’t know I was carrying that much. I didn’t know I was that close to death.”

The Office of Minority Health, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports that as of 2019, African Americans were 30% more likely to die from heart disease than non-Hispanic white people and twice as likely to die from diabetes. The American Heart Association also reports that Black adults had the highest rates of obesity-related cardiovascular disease deaths from 1999 to 2020 and tripled in that time, especially in urban communities. These numbers affect a lot of people, and Wallace was no different.

“Death inspired me to eat better,” he said. “Losing my mother-in-law before I got to meet her. I lost my younger brother before he turned 35. Losing my other older brother at 51. Losing village mothers in their 60s. Ladies who raised us, living very safe lives, dying over food.”

Wallace, now 47, started by exercising and giving up fried foods. That led to changing what he bought at the grocery store and eventually having to suddenly answer his wife and kids about what he was putting in the fridge.

“Initially, he came home and he said, ‘Look, I want y’all to drink almond milk,’ ” Robyn Wallace said. Besides being her husband’s business partner, she also handles strategy and operations for Local Green. “Then he just started making tacos, using avocados and he bought a juicer. Over time, he literally transitioned our house.”

The new health habits also forced him to find new places to dine. Today, you can find plenty of health-conscious restaurants and eateries in Atlanta. But that wasn’t necessarily the case just five or ten years ago.

“You’re always looking for new spots, so I typed in ‘healthy restaurants near me’ and R. Thomas came up,” he explained. “I was shocked because we always go to R. Thomas, but I never looked at R. Thomas as healthy.”

R. Thomas Deluxe Grill has been in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead community since 1985, so you won’t hear a shout-out on rap songs as you would soul food spots such as Chantrelle’s or The Beautiful. But in the 2000s, its neon sign eventually started attracting clubgoers like Wallace, who didn’t feel like waiting in line at the Waffle House or IHOP down the street. R. Thomas served the usual after-party favorites such as wings, scrambled eggs, omelets and burgers. However, the menu also had words like “baked” and “organic” that probably didn’t even register with the inebriated.

After Wallace became a regular daytime customer, he eventually met and developed a rapport with the founder and owner Richard Thomas, and discovered that he was a former fast-food franchiser who co-founded the Bojangles chain of restaurants before he sold his businesses and opened R. Thomas.

“We had a lot of similarities,” Wallace said. Both men were inspired to bring healthy eating options to Atlanta after trips to San Francisco, even though they knew getting Southerners to hear them out would be challenging. “Talking to him prepared me for this journey knowing that this is a labor of love, not just some quick fix. It’s something that you’re gonna have to get in and grind it out.”

While Thomas started his restaurant with $12 million, Wallace initially put up $5,000 of his own money to start Local Green. Before opening the brick-and-mortar location, he operated out of his mother’s kitchen, serving dishes to friends and family as he tested recipes. From there, he secured a spot at the Good Samaritan Health Center that allowed him to cook his meals in its kitchen, which he delivered to his growing customer base through word of mouth. In 2017, he secured a food truck that allowed him to be even more visible and mobile.

The final step was finding a place of his own. He heard through a customer that there was a space with a kitchen available in the historic Bronner Brothers building on the West Side, owned by local community organizer and real estate developer Precious Muhammad. After a couple of phone calls, Wallace met the elusive figure in person. He brought his proposed menu and some samples to convince her to allow him to operate there.

“I looked at what he was going to offer people and said, well, this will help me help the people try to change their dietary law and he’ll make it fun and creative to eat the right foods, just like our parents made it fun and creative for us to eat the wrong foods,” Muhammad said. “He’s a young Black entrepreneur that’s offering a healthy choice for our community, which we have not had. We have soul food in our community, but really a lot of the soul food actually robs us of our soul.”

Wallace got the keys to the space in September 2018 and officially opened in January 2019.

When Wallace walks into Local Green, employees don’t suddenly pick up a broom and find things to reorder because the place is already as clean as his outfit: a Local Green Atlanta T-shirt and hat combo (created with local artists and designers Chilly-O and Melissa A. Mitchell, respectively) and crispy white Nike Air Force 1 sneakers.

There is a 30-foot “Affirmation Wall” covered with handwritten sticky notes left by customers who write everything from their Instagram handles to positive messages such as “Love yourself today.” Today’s playlist is classic soul, with Teddy Pendergrass’ “Love TKO” flowing into Aretha Franklin’s “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do).” With this kind of vibe, even the slightly impatient customer at the register isn’t stressing about the wait time for their order, because who’s going to raise their voice over the Queen of Soul footsteps away from a posted quote by former first lady Michelle Obama?

“You’re not gonna have a Popeyes Chicken-type energy coming in Local Green,” Wallace said behind a grin.

“Having Local Green here gives me a beacon that I can point to in that someone that grew up in the neighborhood with the same lack of that our children now is missing now, has decided to change his life and do a healthy food option,” said lifelong Vine City resident Byron Amos, who represents District 3 on the Atlanta City Council. “How he cleans the front of the store, how he makes sure that the streets around the building are clean, how he pours into his employees. People begin to take ownership of not only the store but the community around it as well.”

Local Green is on the corner of streets named after Joseph E. Lowery and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., pillars of the Civil Rights Movement. It is within walking distance from the original Paschal’s Restaurant, where people like them met to strategize. It is also up the block from the first branch of Citizens Trust Bank, the first Black-owned bank to join the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Federal Reserve System.

Many still consider this historic intersection to be the heartbeat of the neighborhood. But eating on this corner could easily give you a heart attack. There’s a KFC, Zaxby’s Chicken Fingers & Buffalo Wings and a Chick-fil-A located closer to each other than the Atlanta Braves infield. Surrounding them are a handful of locally-owned spots offering barbecue ribs and fried food. All of this is anchored by a gas station and a convenience store selling plenty of sugary drinks and snacks. Walking past all of this makes the words “Eat Well, Be Well” on Local Green’s windows stand out but still easy to ignore.

“We saw them growing at the beginning, but I was like, I don’t know if people are really gonna take to this,” said Rosario Hernandez, a longtime resident of the neighboring English Avenue community and executive director of the Historic Westside Gardens, which hosts a weekly Westside Growers farmers market. “Some people would say it’s a little bit pricey, which I’ll agree with at times. But, when you eat a slab of ribs that messes up your cholesterol, you don’t consider prices then.”

Vine City and English Avenue are located in one of Atlanta’s most-known food deserts, where it’s common for people ranging from longtime residents to college students to travel miles away by car or public transportation just to get affordable, quality, fresh, nutrient-dense food, let alone find a restaurant that serves it. There have been efforts to build grocery stores in the community, but they’ve been disappointing. A Publix opened in the area in 2002 as a part of a much-ballyhooed development called the Historic Westside Village. But it closed on Christmas Eve 2009, citing poor performance and broken promises from the city government over the development of the surrounding area. A Walmart Supercenter replaced it in 2013, and it lasted until it caught fire in May 2022, and it’s been closed ever since. A smaller Walmart Neighborhood Market will replace it in the summer of 2024.

Driving to the store or finding another one when your favorite is closed is a minor inconvenience to some. But for others, especially in this neighborhood where a car is not a given, that inconvenience can be deadly. Multiple studies have linked a lack of access to nutritious foods to higher rates of health problems ranging from diabetes to high blood pressure, which can eventually lead to higher morbidity rates. When it was reported that almost half of Atlanta’s residents lived in food deserts in 2015, then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms enacted a plan to ensure that at least 85% of the city had access to fresh food within a half-mile radius by 2022. In 2021, those efforts increased access to 75% of the city, but according to a Fresh Food Access report from Aglanta.org, the new fresh food spots were primarily located in the expensive Midtown area, not in the south and west sides of town where people were more in need.

“He’s created an awareness to let us know we don’t have to leave our community to get something good to eat,” said Hernandez, who remembers Wallace coming to her farmers market to buy herbs and other ingredients to use at Local Green. “Not everyone will come down from other areas. If I lived in Buckhead and said, ‘let’s go to the corner of MLK and Lowery. There’s this guy that has an amazing little place where we could grab lunch,’ not everyone would come down here. So it’s very important that we as a community support him.”

While Wallace’s mission for bringing healthy food options to his people is ongoing, he still works with his food truck, reaching people at events such as One Music Fest and the PGA Tour championship. Local Green opened its second location in Orlando, Florida, at the Disney Springs shopping complex in 2022,. This is a good look, but Wallace vows never to lose sight of home.

“I have a Robin Hood mentality, so whenever I go somewhere and I discover something, I’m always trying to bring it back to people,” he said before taking a business call from his wife. “We’ve done that in fashion and music. Now it’s time to do that with food.”