A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers

Every era of basketball has a shoe. Not just a silhouette worn on the court, but a cultural object that absorbed the moment—the city, the player, the game—and gave it back to the world in a different form. Russ Bengtson, a former editor at Complex and SLAM, has spent a career at the intersection of hoops and sneaker culture, and this book is the distillation of that knowledge: fifteen shoes, fifteen chapters, fifteen windows into how basketball became what it is.

From Walt Frazier’s PUMA Clydes and the New York City street game to the Air Jordan’s reinvention of athlete marketing, from the Nike Air Swoopes and the growth of the women’s game to the hyper-engineered Nike Adapt BB, A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers moves through the sport’s history with the kind of specificity that only a true obsessive can provide. Full-color photography and detailed illustrations throughout.