It looks as if the big winner of the NBA off-season was the captain of the dysfunctional New York Knicks, who wasn't even invited to play for Team USA in the World Championships.
Yes, Stephon Marbury, whose Knicks were eliminated from playoff consideration sometime around Christmas, who last was seen wearing an American basketball uniform at the disastrous 2004 Olympics, spent the summer scoring image points and making fans while hawking shoes.
It's all because of a number.
We've seen threes on Marbury's chest ever since we first saw him in a Georgia Tech jersey 11 years ago, but now he's associated with four digits: 14.98.
That's the retail price, in U.S. dollars, of his new shoe line, the Starbury One. For a change, cost isn't an issue -- it's a cause.
"Get with the movement," Marbury says.
A sneaker revolution? Sole power? Not quite. There will always be those who prefer their Air Jordans and Answers, who want to wear certain models specifically \o7because\f7 they're expensive. People who immerse themselves in the Cristal Culture, where pricier automatically means better, don't always get it. Does a $4,000 Breitling watch really tell time that much better than a $50 Timex?
"The way I see it, if you knew better, you'd do better," Marbury said by telephone. "If you know that a shoe costs a certain amount of money and it's being marked up 200%, if you're fine with paying that, it's cool."
If not, there are alternatives. It's not a completely new idea. Shaquille O'Neal introduced a $40 shoe at Payless two years ago (Now Shaq has moved on to selling shoes in China). Marbury and the retail chain of Steve and Barry's have taken it one step further.
The standard procedure is for shoe companies to use a player's street cred to sell expensive sneakers. Now some cheap shoes could build a player's standing back up.
Check this: Some people are buying the shoes just to support Marbury.
"I usually go for the Jordans that are so much more," Josh Samuel said after he grabbed a pair of Starbury Ones on Wednesday. "For 15 bucks, what he's doing, I think it's great."
Mostly, the shoes are going to people who are jumping at the chance for lower prices. Shoppers lined up at the stores when the Starbury Ones came out in August.
"It was like an Xbox 360 thing," a staffer at the Steve and Barry's at the Block in Orange said.
