Russ Bengtson Talks "A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers"
This week, our own Brand Director and Head of Sports Marketing, Dexter Gordon, had the pleasure to sit down with writer Russ Bengtson and discuss his NEW book, A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers.
Interview below has been edited for clarity.
DEX / AND1
The first question is, of course, introduce yourself and just talk about some of the things you've done, the things you've been involved with. Of course, I know you, OG from SLAM magazine. Just kind of introduce yourself to people and let them know who you are.
Russ Bengtson
There was kind of a YouTube thing, kind of the predecessor, I guess, to a lot of things that are out there, a lot of sneaker media out there and been doing this basketball sneaker thing for a long time now. I was going to Knicks games when they were pretty bad. And Nets games when they were still playing at Continental Airlines Arena. And when it was still Continental Airlines Arena. So seen a lot.
Actually, it's funny. The first NBA All Star Game I covered was 1997 in Cleveland for the uh- that was NBA 50. So, picture that, first All-Star Game ever, and like every legend in the history of the sport is at that game. I feel like I went to a party and ended up behind Moses Malone and like a buffet line. I mean, I've been doing this for a long time now.
DEX / AND1
Yeah, that’s cool, man. I mean, of course, like I said, I know you from OG back in when SLAM first started. And just to see you, man, all the way here with the book and everything, man, that's just cool. And my next question is, what's the importance of sneakers to not only the game of basketball, but the culture of basketball, except for the obvious reasons you got to have sneakers on your feet to play. But what do you feel is the importance of sneakers, especially now, from before and now to the game of basketball and just the culture in general?
Russ Bengtson
So, it's funny. And Bobbito Garcia was kind enough to write the forward for this book. And I always tell him when we talk about his book, “Where'd you get Those?”, which was such a huge deal when that published. He talked about Air Jordan 1 in 1985 being kind of the end. And I was like, Bob, like that was the beginning for me. I'm 52 years old. I was 14 when the Air Jordan 1 came out. I grew up on suburban Long Island. I didn't know from going to Gerry Cosby's or wherever they were going to hunt down like rare colored Nike blazers. I didn't even know that stuff existed. So, you know, for someone like him, Air Jordan being this like built in, cool sort of thing was like, oh, man, like, what are they doing to this? And for someone like me, it was like this light going on where it's like, oh, my god like, this can be- you know I knew what Nike was or whatever. I knew I wanted cool sneakers even before that, but like you know, that kind of boosted it a whole other level. I talk about it in the introduction to the book, but like I don't remember whether it was Michael Jordan that got me into the idea of Air Jordan or Air Jordan got me paying more attention to, Mike, I must have seen some of the NCAA games, but those were always on.
But that just kind of elevated it to a whole new level. And for me like, the story of basketball and the story of sneakers has always been one story. And I think a lot of times when you see people write about it, when you see documentaries made about it, they always pick a side, like just for kicks or obviously any number of NBA books. Maybe there'd be a brief mention somewhere in there of what happened with sneakers but like to me, you can't split it like that. You can't tell the one story without telling the other one. And I think that's something that only built as it went along, and it built with my career. When I went to SLAM, SLAM was a basketball magazine, but sneakers were such a big part of it. Like I remember going into locker rooms and giving NBA players copies of the new issue, and they would flip straight to the back to the sneaker section. And it's like, these are dudes who were getting checks from sneaker brands. These are guys who were clearly getting sent shoes and they still wanted to see what the next stuff was. They were just like us on that level. So, I think it's such a universal thing. I think even guys who have their own signature models, guys who've been doing this for years, still want to flex. That's something that's never going to go away.
DEX / AND1
Definitely. As you mentioned, the book, “A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers,” I'm sure the 15 sneakers that you picked, some other people might have other ideas of, “hey, no, this sneaker, this sneaker, this sneaker,” but why was it important for you to really write this book? In your mind, you saying from your point of view it was these 15 sneakers. Why was it so important to you to write this book?
Russ Bengtson
I mean, you know, I've been telling people, I feel like I've been writing this since I was like 14 years old. Since that time seeing Air Jordans and watching Mike that rookie year and just kind of like not being able to separate these things. And that's been like- My entire career has been built on that intersection between hoops and sneakers. It's going to a sneaker event or going to like Foot Locker on 34th street or back in the sort of golden era, like making that downtown loop of Alife Rivington, Supreme, Stussy, Union, you know, going to all those spots even long before Nike opened 21 Mercer, you know going to Dave's Quality Meat when it was still like a couple of steps down and around the corner from CBGB. And then that night, going to a Knicks game or a Nets game, you know I still have, and it's kind of ironic actually thinking about it. I have a big supreme bag that is full of all of my old credentials. Like, I never threw any of their credentials away. The Knicks and the Nets, when I was first at SLAM, they wouldn't give us a season pass, so we had to send a fax in every single game to get a credential. And like I was going to almost every home game of both teams. So that's a lot of fax paper. So all along, it's not like I was taking notes towards the idea of this book, but all the conversations I had along the way, like a lot of the stories I wrote along the way, a lot of the people I met along the way, you know it's kind of an internet joke now is about the friends you made along the way. But like that's how this book really came together. You know, once I decided I wanted to write this and that this was sort of the approach I wanted to take with it. I'd already built up all these relationships that I could draw on and had all this knowledge that I could draw on. So fortunately, as much research as I had to do, a lot of it was already done. And I guess like the other thing is it didn't start as 15. I think my initial sort of flash that like, oh, my god, this is the idea was like “A History of Basketball in Ten Sneakers.” I was thinking ten, and then I started to make a list of what sneakers I would need to talk about and I'm like, wait a minute, if I'm going to cover all of basketball history, ten ain't going to cut it. I'm going to be missing- I'm going to have huge gaps in this. And then it was like a dozen, and I was like, ehh still not quite there. 15 felt right. Like 20 seemed like too much. Then you're starting to get into like super short chapters, probably. And I don't know, it just doesn't seem as significant at that point. You're almost going to get to the point where there's filler, although there wouldn't be, like I think I easily could have done 18, say, probably would have been a nice, sweet spot. But 15 worked. 15 worked and you know, I think that's where it needed to be.
DEX / AND1
Nice, nice. So, what were some of your first memories of the And1 brand and some of your memories and after that, specifically the Tai Chi. What were your memories of the Tai Chi which was in your book, Chapter eleven.
Russ Bengtson
Yeah, And1 was a brand that was involved with SLAM kind of from the start of both. I think And1 started the year before Slam did. I want to say And1 was 93’ and slam was 94’. So, when I first saw SLAM, which I discovered in a supermarket in Delaware at like 03:00 a.m., like wandering around shopping and flipping through it, I'm like, oh, my god, I need to write for these guys. It was probably, I don't remember offhand. I would have to go back and look to those early issues, but it was either just a player ad or a Larry Johnson ad. I think maybe And1 had signed Larry Johnson at that point, but by the time I came on board was when the first shoe was happening, when the Marbury shoe was happening, and you know, SLAM was more built around Steph than it was around anybody else. SLAM launched when Jordan was retired. Steph was our first high school diary, you know, Dennis Page, the publisher, knew NYC basketball. Like we were in NYC, so like, all that stuff made sense. So, Steph was like an early, early, early main guy for us. And to see And1 who, you know, went from doing t-shirts with slogans on the back to a legit sneaker that a top ten draft pick wore in his first NBA game within three years was crazy. Like no one did something like that. And like we did things with And1 along the way. I remember we went to one commercial shoot; I think it was for man, what shoe was that? I'm going to totally space on the name. I think it was a lower cut shoe. It was over lasted. It had mesh. It was when you guys signed, like, Larry Hughes, Rex Chapman, like, that that group of guys.
DEX / AND1
I know what shoe you're talking about….
Russ Bengtson
There was a commercial shoot in I think it was probably in Philly in a gym like all day, and that's when the Skip Tape started going around before it became the mixtape. But the Tai Chi, to me, was like, if there was a single And1 shoe that really summed up and won in the late 90s, early two thousands, the Tai Chi was the one that I think brought everything together and just really popped off and really showed what And1 could be. That shoe was everywhere all of a sudden, and not just on NBA courts, but people were copping multiple pairs of that shoe because it took color so well. The materials were good. They weren't like, super crazy detail. Cut up stitched, huge panels of like full grain- tumbled leather on one side, nubuck on the other. You could get a couple colors for the price you would pay for, like, one pair of Jordans. And back then was when people were starting to stack up throwbacks and pinwheels and you know, really get into that vibe of and I see people talking about Tyler the Creator doing it now, and I'm like, “yo, like, how old are you people?” Like, people were matching colors, not caring about what team they were repping way back then. You know, like, you would find like whatever I mean, NWA was doing it know, if you wanted silver and black, you would wear the Raiders and you wear the White Sox. It didn't matter what city they were from, what sport they played. So, it was kind of the same thing back then. You wanted your whole fit to hook up, and you could do that with Tai Chis. Those were available in so many colors. When I think of Tai Chis, I don't even think of like Foot Locker as much as I think of like VIM and man, what was it? Dr. J's, you know spots like that, like kind of the I guess they would call it urban clothing spots. You know but then you have Vince Carter, and Vince was, to me, the ultimate NBA story tied to that shoe. The idea that in the 2000s, a superstar level player, he was just breaking into that superstar plane, I think that weekend probably established him as even more of one, because I think he was the leading vote getter in that all-star game. And for Vince to put on a shoe that he was not getting paid to wear, and flex that shoe the entire weekend was pretty unprecedented. Like, we've seen things like that since when Kobe had his free agent season and Gilbert Arenas had his wild, like, wear everything, including a pair of Dolce and Gabbana’s, but we'd never seen one player wearing one shoe for a like world breaking event like that.
DEX / AND1
Yeah, man, that was huge for the brand. I mean, like, you said just to see him come out in that dunk contest and kind of wear it- you know that was huge. That was huge.
Russ Bengtson
And that was when like it really started. It had crept up like that, you know, I think you could look back to like Jordan in the dunk contest, it was obviously a big deal and Dee Brown, but there were winners like you know if you ask me right now, like, what shoe Kenny Walker wore when he won the slam dunk contest, I don't really remember. It was probably Converse, but I don't know. There was a period when that wasn't a huge deal. And I think that dunk contest and that All Star Game in 2000 kind of led into All Star becoming, like, this huge sneaker event every year. 2001, 2002. It started to get real crazy. That was when you had, like, Weber in the chrome Dada’s and Paul Pierce in the what do you call it, the green patent shoes and Sheed in the red patent Air Force ones. I think Vince helped blow that up where it was like, damn, people are really checking for this stuff. We need to go crazy.
DEX / AND1
Yeah, that's dope, man. For the final question, any thoughts you want to leave us with? What do you have coming next? Is it another book? Is it maybe a TV adaptation of the book?
Russ Bengtson
I guess I'm starting to think about that because a lot of it has been build up to this and really trying to work with this book before it comes out and praying and hoping that it actually catches on and like it feels real. It'll feel a lot more real when I see it on shelves in a bookstore. I know a lot of people are going to buy it through Amazon and wherever else, but seeing it somewhere or in the local library, that'll be cool. So, I want to ride that for at least a week and see where it goes. I've started to think about it, but I'm not sure yet. Like, at this point I’ll probably end up doing some sort- I registered a Substack a while ago that I haven't written much on, that I kind of want to get going again, even just as even supplemental for this. If people have questions or obviously there's a couple of shoes that I don't think I covered as much as I could have that I would love to sort of add extra material for. Maybe if there's a paperback, it becomes “A History of Basketball in 16 Sneakers, or 17.” You know maybe you add one to the end. Because when I initially pitched it back in 2019, we're four years beyond that, so like, so much more has happened. You know, I just want to see where it goes, man. And I'm curious to see even where basketball shoes go like, I feel like there's actually been serious progress made even since I wrote this. As far as especially in WNBA women's shoes, when I wrote it, I was like, man, like, they got to start doing more WNBA signature shoes. And in between the time I pitched it and wrote it, Breanna Stewart had two shoes now, like Sabrina got her shoe, and people are feeling that. So hopefully that opens up a whole new thing. Yeah, it's just seeing where this goes, and hopefully the next idea just pops into my head like this one did, because there's obviously more to be written in this vein.
DEX / AND1
Oh, man. That's great, man. That's dope, man. Yeah, man. Thank you, man. Like I said, you’re one of the OGs in this game been around, man. I appreciate your time, man. Thank you so much. Thank you for the book, man. I love it.
Russ Bengtson
Anytime. No, I'm glad. I’m glad to hear that.