Stepping out of a snow-white stretch Hummer, NBA star Stephon Marbury arrives in style at the spanking new Steve & Barry's University Sportswear store in Culver City.
The lavish ride is somewhat out of sync with the radically affordable $14.98 Starbury One basketball shoe he's promoting, but the folks waiting in line for more than an hour to see him don't care. They're here to see the maverick N.Y. Knicks point guard.
Some are even interested in the shoes.
The low price of the Starbury One -- which Marbury plans to wear on the court this year -- has generated huge publicity and plenty of debate about the quality of the shoe. Marbury insists that it is comparable to other high-end basketball shoes. "It's the same shoe. The same shoe," he says, laughing in exasperation as he sits down and begins signing shoes and other apparel.
Well, yes and no, says Dr. Bob Baravarian, chief of podiatry at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Baravarian took the shoe for a spin in the waiting room at the Foot & Ankle Institute in Santa Monica, where he's co-director.
Hopping around in blue scrubs, with a 5-foot waterfall in the corner drowning out the sound of traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, Baravarian jogged a few laps down the hall then came back into the room.
"I've really been wanting to try these out," he says.
He then sat down, took off the shoe and examined it closely. He put one hand on the toe and the other hand on the heel and gave it a good twist, like a dishrag.
His colleague Dr. Gary Briskin, co-founder of the institute and an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, popped in and tried on the shoe next.
He then took it off and gave it a good twist as well. Apparently twisting a shoe is like thumping a watermelon. The way it twists tells a lot about the stability.
Baravarian found the shoe to be a little soft, though Briskin found it "a lot soft." That's a key point. The softer, or more flexible, the shoe is, the less support it will provide.
Although a lot of shoes have needless decoration on the top and sides, multicolored soles in athletic shoes often are there for a reason. "Some of those different colored materials are denser than others," says Briskin, "so they're placing it strategically for control."
It's somewhat hard to assess the construction of the Starbury One because the leather extends to the bottom of the shoe, thus obscuring its depth.
