Have you been able to gauge the reaction to Sole Provider so far?

It's really just been straight love [about the book], even from the hardcore shoe heads.

Do you think the book will explain to other people - people who already might not be into to the shoe game, who don't own every pair of Jordans that have come out - the appeal that sneakers have?

Yeah, definitely. I've had people come up to me like, "my husband bought four pairs of shoes when we went out once and I didn't understand it - but then once I read this book, it made me understand." I think it kind of validates the [sneaker] culture. I'm not just some geek for having 200 shoes, if they're gonna do a book about it of this magnitude, it's like "I'm not alone."

That's one thing I was definitely struck by when I first saw the book. You know, "wow, this is a hardcover joint" - when people call it a "shoe bible" it makes sense, it's an apt comparison, because of the impact Sole Provider has.

I agree - but we didn't set out to do that, I can tell you that right now. We did not set out to do that, but we'll take it. We set out not to represent the shoes, but just document the three-dimensional culture of basketball over the last 30 years from Nike's perspective. Not really their perspective, but their standpoint. I mean, excuse my language for a minute, but this is not a Nike dick-suck book. It just looks at one company and what they've done, documenting their contributions to the game of basketball over the last thirty years. That's how we wanted the book to present itself. And in doing that, you had to focus on the shoes, because basically what Nike is - outside of being a marketing company - is a shoe company. We didn't look at it to be a "shoe book." But we were very conscious throughout the whole process that our biggest critics would be the shoe heads, cats who are deep, deep, deep into shoes. So we had to be on point to the level that we don't make it a technical book where only the shoe heads understand what's going on, because we'd lose the mainstream audience who are into basketball and basketball culture by itself.

You had to compromise between the two.

Yeah, we had to be conscious of every story that we did, every image that we showed would be able to please both audiences. And in the end, to get the love from the shoe heads showed that we did our thing. Because we knew that that audience would be the hardest audience to please. But we also knew that there were a lot of cats in the mainstream who simply associate themselves with basketball who were hopefully going to feel this book. You know, "I ain't into shoes like that, but I love the game of basketball, and I'm buying this because I love basketball." You know, and not losing them into "who cares about a midsole, who cares about an upper, or what goes into the Flightposite technology, I don't give a shit about that."

How did the book come together? Was the topic something you were into, something you were researching, or…

It was all from Nike. They had an idea of what they wanted to do, and they just called. My phone rang, "this is Ray Butts from Nike, we have an idea [floating around over] the last five years - we want the [culmination of] this thirty year campaign to be a book"

That's gotta be a dream project to just land in your lap like that.

It really is. You know, I didn't know them from Adam though - in all honesty, I've always been an Adidas cat. Seriously! There's no secret to it. I got kicked out of a Nike basketball camp for wearing Adidas.

Word?

I was doing a story for Slam. I happened to be cool with the cat who was running the camp. I was doing a story, and getting access other reporters weren't able to get, you know, eating with the players and all that. Kevin Garnett and Vince Carter were there at the camp, and I had on my Adidas. A brother from Nike by the name of Don Crenshaw who didn't know me came up and was like, "we don't mind you doing the story, but you cant come up here and eat our food wearing the enemy's shoes!" I was like "damn!" I came back the next day, and he handed me two Nike shoe boxes, and said "don't let me EVER catch you wearing those [Adidas] again!" But that story actually got out, got told, so Nike knew I was an Adidas cat. So I was really surprised when the phone call came just to do the book.

That's funny you bring up Nike and Adidas especially now with the big Kobe question, of where he's going [next] for shoe endorsements. What's your take on that?

I kinda got a little inside information on that…I think he's going to...hmm…here's the bottom line. This year he's going to be all over the place, because nobody wants to sign him before the contract is up, and that's not until the end of this basketball season. And on the record, I don't know how much that is. Off the record, it's a lot of money. The companies are all sitting back until he's a free agent.

I'm still curious to see what Nike's going to end up doing with Vince [Carter]. After reading Sole Provider, and going through all the Jordan and even the Barkley campaigns, and all the stuff with Li'l Penny, these were all legendary marketing efforts, but they really haven't tapped into VC.

In all honesty, if you remember the uptown commercials where he was Dr. Funk…

The Rayguns…

No, before the Rayguns, when he was doing the alley oop stuff.

Ah, the Rucker [Park] Commercials.

Yeah, that was going to be the springboard into selling "Dr. Funk" as the lead guy. This was their campaign for Vince, his "Spike and Mike," his alter ego commercial. One week after the commercial he gets injured. Out for the year. Kills the campaign. That's why they switched to Rayguns, because they couldn't sell Vince alone. You don't see Vince really playing basketball, you see Paul Pierce, etc. They had to go to the team concept because Dr. Funk got scrapped when Vince got hurt.

So are they going to do more with the Rayguns?

No, Nike's already moved on to the next thing [for the VC Shox II]. He just shot the commercial and the print ads, it's sick. Here's their chance to get solo Vince out there. But one week after they shoot the commercial, he gets hurt again. So it might seem like Nike hasn't done [as much] with Vince, but it's just the worst possible timing that every time they try to roll out a campaign, he gets hurt. So it's going to be interesting now what they do with Vince.

The Rayguns ad definitely came out at the right time, because they tapped in to the whole "throwback" craze that was really just starting to pick up steam.

Yeah, and you have to give Nike a lot of credit, because that was all last minute. One of the things Nike does that amazes me, is that this is some old shit, some Plan-B, and in 24 hours, [Nike] and Wieden + Kennedy roll this out. And in my opinion, it worked better than if they just put Dr. Funk out. You're able to get all your other athletes involved. Plus, the older fans liked the Parliament, the Bootsy, and all the 70s theme, and the younger cats could say "damn, Nike got a roster." They forgot about Dirk and Steve Nash, they forgot about Tim Duncan, they didn't know Jermaine O'Neal left Adidas to come to Nike. Pierce, Stackhouse, these cats got a squad. And that's not even including Jason Kidd.

Yeah, I was wondering why [Kidd] wasn't involved.

Well they had an idea to do something with J Kidd and the Rayguns, but the Nets never lost (laughs) so they weren't able to film it.

To bring it back to Sole Provider for a minute, one of the things I wanted to ask you was what sort of things surprised you while you were doing the research. I'm sure you came into the project with a good deal of information, being a basketball aficionado as it were, but kind of stuff made you say "damn," what kind of stuff was a surprise to you?

Some of the stories really got me, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, stuff I couldn't print. But there was this tape Nike sent me of all their basketball commercials over a thirty-year stretch. And what amazed me was not that all these commercials existed - it was cool to just say "oh, I forgot about that" - but they all came from one company. I'm looking at the barbershop commercials with George Gervin, and tie that in to Mike and Spike, to the Barkley talk show. Tie that in to David Robinson's neighborhood, tie that into Li'l Penny. Tie that into Fun Police.

Oh yeah! I forgot the Fun Police!

Exactly! And then you have the freestyle commercial. And the Rayguns commercial - it hits you that "damn, ALL this is from Nike." You associate it with just being basketball - and I'm not even talking about the NY/LA playground commercials, way before And 1 even started going that route - you tie it all together, and it all represents one company. That was a shock to me. I'm still amazed by that.

And that was all one ad company too, all Wieden + Kennedy.

Yep.

Were you feeling the Wieden + Kennedy custom AF1? With the mink?

Oh yeah. We actually iced out an AF1 and were going to shoot it for the book. We sent a shoe to Jacob The Jeweler.

Jacob did a SHOE?

Ha, yeah. We only sent him one shoe though, not a whole pair. The pricetag was like five grand. But it didn't make the book though, I don't know if the shoe got sent back, I don't know where the image exists. Its one of those stories for when Nike does the 50 year book…

That will be an anecdote, one of those legends…

There's a photo in the book of the black Italian leather Air Jordan I that only 5 pair of those exist in the world. There's a brother by the name of Mike Parker that works for Converse now who came up with that. He owns two of them, and lent one to Nike to shoot for the book. And the Jacob the Jeweler one, I was surprised that didn't make the book. I guess it was too over the top.

Was there anything else you would have liked to add into the book that you didn't get a chance to?

Yeah, Sonny Vaccaro. As far as I'm concerned, if Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight are one entity, and Michael Jordan the second, and Wieden + Kennedy the third, Sonny Vaccarro is the fourth dimension. It still bothers me that we weren't able to give him the love that he deserves in the book. And that's strictly for legal purposes, with him not being with the company. Even if we said something good, we didn't want to run into any lawsuits.

He's with Adidas now, right?

Yeah, him and Nike have a little drama between them, I don't know what the deal is with that. But what you have to understand about Nike when doing the book is that Nike is not looked at as a shoe company. And a lot of times they don't even call themselves a shoe company. They're a marketing company. And they have to put out good product to support what they do with the marketing. What establishes their brand, outside of having product - probably the best out there - is the marketing scheme. People buy it for the swoosh, and that comes from marketing. And in doing that, even with doing this book, there were a lot of names that couldn't be mentioned because of the fact that Nike does stuff to make money. That's what a marketing company does with product. And Sonny Vacarro, I think if they even reached out to ask him to do something he would have said no. I'm not sure. But we couldn't even mention him because of legal reasons. From a legal standpoint, Nike has to cover they ass. Kevin Garnet gave me the ok to use his name, Chris Webber gave me the ok to use his name, they just gave that to me. But [Nike] told me even if they gave it to me in writing, we couldn't use it. It ain't nothing personal, it was over my head.

One thing I wanted to ask you, kind of from another standpoint: with the resurgence of Air Force Ones in popular culture do you think people are too hung up on it? As far as that's the only shoe that seems to get name-dropped or whatever. It's definitely a contrast from when you would see Biz Markie in videos with Safaris, and other shoes, do you think there's too much of an AF1 fixation?

I understand exactly what you're saying and I don't necessarily NOT agree with you, I just think that in this day and age, the whole retro thing is poppin right now. And the AF1 is on top of that simply because the lines on that shoe are perfect. The design of that shoe is perfect. You cant find any other shoes that go well with jeans, shorts, sweats - you can color coordinate with anything you've got, and there's a comfort level that the AF1 has that other retro shoes don't. The converse Dr Js are not as comfortable. The Adidas Pro Models are not as comfortable. You've got the highs and the lows. And the strap! That's an extra element other shoes don't have. The AF1 does things that have not been replicated by any other shoes. Here's how I break it to you: asking if too much is being made out of Air Force Ones is like asking DJs if too much is being made out of Technics 1200 turntables. Now those turntables came out in 1981 - you would have thought that by 20 years later they would have come out with a better turntable.

But you can't beat the 1200s.

You can't do it. All the DJs in the world from Miami, to Funk Flex, to all the cats in the world - still use 1200s to this day. Scratch pads are perfect, stylus is perfect, weight is perfect, everything about it is the perfect turntable. And the AF1 is just like that. So its hard for me to say you're making too much of it when you come very close to the perfect shoe, from a performance standpoint and just from a style standpoint. The lines on that shoe will never go out of style. The fact that they do it in a multitude of colors works, but the fact that 50 percent of the [AF1s] they manufacture are white on white - Adidas doesn't do that with Pro Models, Converse doesn't do that, Pony doesn't do that- it goes with everything. Connects with everything. Paul Pierce told me he wears his with a suit!

As far as other retro sneakers, do you have any personal favorites you'd like to see Nike put out that they haven't retro-ed yet?

I think they're on point. There's not one particular shoe that I think is missing, not from my perspective. They put the Legend out, and the Jordans, the grey and blue Georgetowns. The Jordan III is to me, like the AF1 of the Jordan line, I'd like to see that in different color schemes. That shoe I'd like to see never come off that market. That, and - I know Russ Bengtson of Slam agrees with me - I'd like to see every shoe Charles Barkely ever wore retroed.

He had the hot ones with the Velcro strap.

Yeah, the Alpha Force.

That's funny you brought up Russ Bengtson, I've bought pairs of shoes off him on eBay - do you come across a lot of people with ridiculous shoe collections? Are you ever surprised by people who you find out are huge shoe heads?

I didn't know Barkley was a shoe head. He has over 3000 pairs. Pro athletes are the worst ones in the world. Baron Davis KEEPS - understand this, not has, but KEEPS - 100 pairs of white on whites in his closet at all times. He gets 4 pairs every two weeks from Nike, clean, and it's a rotation - he has to have 100 pairs at all times. Never dips below that. He wears them all the time. Quentin Richardson - he has every pair of Jordans ever made. EVER. He has stuff even Mike doesn't have.

As far as non-athletes, any interesting or notable people you were surprised that they were shoeheads?

Not really, I've seen people with interests in that sort of thing. I didn't know Mekhi Phifer was into that. I didn't know Justin Timberlake was into sneakers like that.

I see him rocking Dunks in videos with Pharell from the Neptunes.

That's the hot shit, Dunks are about to come back hard. With the level of the AF1s. 2003, they're going to be the new thing.

Personally, I hope they just don't play it out with too many color ways. The reissue Dunks started popping up in little boutiques, sneaker specialty shops, but now you can get some pairs at Foot Locker.

Yeah, that makes the heads mad, but you can't expect Nike to keep stuff out of the market. They don't make shoes just for you (laughs). But that's what's interesting with cats like Remix the Kicks, cats that hook em up with their own style, that's sick. Yesterday [at a Sole Provider Niketown book signing] in Toronto I saw cats with the candy apple red, caramel, steel grey dunks - I was like "y'all got it goin on."

Great man, thanks for taking the time to talk to me about all this. Good luck with the book and all your other stuff.

Yeah, no doubt, thanks for calling me.

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