The Sneaker Kings Read online

  “He got on a pair of Air Yeezy 2s,” another kid commented on Brandon’s shoes.

  “Ain’t they Toyko 5 Jordans?” said another of Simba’s. “I ain’t never seen them before up close.”

  “Yeah, the other one got on a pair LeBron MVPs.”

  Paul overheard some of the chatter about his nephew and his two sneaker-loving buddies and forced a grin. There’s no stopping these guys from getting attention, he admitted to himself. They caused a commotion wherever he took them.

  >>>

  As the game neared halftime, the Rocky Mountain Heat was down by eleven points. David Terry had scored seventeen, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the much taller Virginia players who dominated in the paint. Brandon shook his head. “I’m glad we got here when we did, because Terry’s not gonna make it to the finals. His team’s too small.”

  “Yeah, the Virginia team is bigger at every position,” Simba agreed.

  At halftime, Brandon got to work. “I’ll get the car keys from my uncle so you guys can bring out the shoes.”

  He hopped up from his bleacher seat and looked back to find his uncle sitting farther up behind them. And as Brandon made his move to get the keys, several eyes followed him.

  “Nice Yeezys, man,” one of the teens sitting behind them commented.

  “Thanks.”

  When Brandon reached his uncle, Paul asked, “What do you need the keys for?”

  “I wanna get David Terry to sign a few of our shoes.”

  So he’s gonna store them away in the closet for four or five years—like the others—until they’re worth something, Paul thought. He took a deep breath and handed the keys over.

  “Make sure you lock it back too.”

  “Of course. We have more valuable stuff in there than you do,” Brandon quipped.

  As soon he walked off, the rush was on as several scouts approached his uncle to pay their respects.

  “Hey, Paul ‘Three-Ball’ Weiller. What are you doing hiding out up in here?” a round-bellied white man in a NC State T-shirt asked him, extending his hand.

  Paul smiled, and they shook hands. “Hey, Clifford, it’s been a long time.”

  “That was your nephew, right?” Clifford said, referring to Brandon. “Is he playing any ball now?”

  Paul chuckled. “Nah, he’s more into the shoe game than the ball game.”

  “I can see that. That might not be a bad place to be. The shoe industry is worth billions. You’re thinking about going in that direction with him?”

  Paul winced. “Ahh, I thought about it a few times, but I’ve never been much of a salesman. That’s more of my nephew’s bag. He seems to have a knack for it.”

  “Are you thinking about scouting or coaching or anything?” Clifford pressed him. “Folks could always use a guy like you who understands how to shoot the three-ball.”

  Paul continued to grin and shake it off. He wrangled with the reality of no longer being able to play in the league. “I don’t know, man. I’m still trying to separate myself from the game a bit, actually,” he answered honestly. “Maybe in a few more years, once I have it all out of my system, I can think about doing something else with it, you know.”

  Clifford understood him completely. Few former players wanted to coach until they knew for a fact that their playing days were over. “Yeah, I understand that. But sometimes it’s best to jump right back into the game as a scout or a coach, while people still know you and respect you, than to wait around and have to rebuild your rep,” he advised. “You know what I mean? Get it while you’re still hot. Jason Kidd taking that Brooklyn Nets job straight off the New York Knicks bench was a stroke of genius.”

  “Yeah, until he starts losing and the media questions whether or not he knows what he’s doing,” Paul quipped.

  Clifford shrugged. “Yeah, well, that comes with the territory. You always have to answer questions to prove you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, I just don’t know if I’m ready for all of that,” Paul insisted.

  Clifford figured he had said enough. “Well, good seeing you again, Paul.” Then, before making his exit, he asked, “What do you think about this David Terry kid?”

  “He’s good. But that’s a hell of a team he’s playing.”

  “Yeah, it’s too much size. But I’ll see you around.”

  >>>

  In the second half of the semifinal game, the VA Hoops continued to double-team David Terry, making it harder for him to score. But at least his teammates were able to play some better defense inside. Nevertheless, the Rocky Mountain Heat lost even as David Terry scored thirty-five points.

  “Well, we got a chance to see him live and in person. And he’s good,” Simba noted.

  Leon nodded, agreeing with him. “Yeah.”

  Brandon jumped up from the bleachers. “Let’s get him to sign our shoes now.” He had a permanent black marker in hand.

  “Dude, I’m still not understanding why we want him to sign our shoes,” Leon said. He was still thinking about wearing them.

  Brandon stopped, irritated. “Look, man, just back me up here. If Terry blows up after college, these shoes will be worth thousands.”

  Simba nodded, understanding Brandon’s long-term mission, but Leon remained skeptical.

  “And what if he doesn’t blow up like that?”

  Brandon shrugged. “Then we sell them to someone back in Rocky Mount for three hundred dollars or something. Or even to someone at the college he chooses. I mean, you’re totally missing the point. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by him signing them.”

  The argument slowed Brandon down as David Terry headed back toward the locker room with his teammates.

  “Shit,” Brandon cursed. “Now we’ll have to wait for him to come out.”

  “My bad. I just didn’t see how it benefited us,” Leon said. “But I get what you’re saying now.”

  “Everything’s not for right now, L,” Brandon explained. “I’m trying to set us all up for later. And if some of these guys get drafted with sneaker deals, we’ll be right on it. So we have to think about that in advance.”

  A young baller approached Brandon and Leon, eyeing their boxes of shoes curiously. “Ay, what kind of shoes y’all got in there?” he asked.

  Before Brandon and Leon could respond to him, someone else recognized them.

  “Ay, y’all from that ESPN special on sneakerheads, right?”

  The next thing the guys knew, a crowd of young ballers from several AAU teams had surrounded them. They swarmed them from everywhere.

  Brandon smiled and nodded to them, while he remained focused on David Terry. He didn’t know any of the other players.

  “Yo, how does somebody join The Beast Team, like if we live in North Carolina?” someone asked.

  “You follow us on Twitter and Instagram and just hit us up,” Leon answered.

  “And where do we buy the T-shirts from?”

  “The same way. You just hit us up and ask for it,” Leon told the eager crowd.

  “Yeah, we just sold out of five different colors in Greensboro earlier,” Simba added.

  The Adidas rep watched it all and overheard the buzz surrounding the young sneakerheads with glee. These kids are definitely onto something!

  Brandon shrugged and said, “These shoes are nothing special. They’re just some new kicks we bought from Greensboro.”

  Leon popped open one of the boxes, and the young ballers got excited anyway.

  “OOOHHH! Y’all got the lime-green KDs. They don’t have them where we live. We from Wilmington. We only got the dark blue and purple ones.”

  That was the magic of traveling for sneakers. Different regions of the country stocked a variety of shoe brands and colors.

  Leon said, “Purple? Y’all have purple KDs in Wilmington?” He figured a pair of purple KDs would fetch a hefty markup out in Arizona. The Phoenix Suns’ colors were purple and orange.

  “How much y’all want for them KDs?”
someone asked. “And they size eleven? I can get two hundred dollars for them right now.”

  The sneaker game had become a national Easter egg hunt. But Brandon kept his eyes on the immediate prize.

  “Nah, man, they’re not for sale right now.”

  “I’ll give you three hundred for ’em.”

  Brandon looked at the scruffy baller and didn’t believe him. He smiled and said, “You don’t have three hundred dollars.”

  “What? Wait right here then.”

  The dark-brown baller disappeared from the crowd with urgency, but Brandon didn’t want the guy’s money. He wanted David Terry’s signature.

  Once again, Paul watched the commotion surrounding his nephew from up high in the bleachers, and he continued to be amazed. He also thought about the rough city of Durham and decided to get a little closer to the action in case something crazy broke out. So he rose from his seat and stretched like a giant as he walked down to the floor to provide backup.

  “You guys all right?” he asked purposely. He wanted everyone to know that he was with them. But Brandon ignored his uncle and made a beeline for David Terry as soon as he walked out from the locker rooms in street clothes.

  “I got a black marker just for you, man,” Brandon told him with a grin.

  David tossed the ball back in his court. “I get a pair of free shoes too?”

  “Do you wear size eleven?” Brandon asked him, doubting it.

  “Twelve.”

  “I’ll have to send them to you then. We only have tens and elevens with us.”

  “What about one of those TBT hats?” David asked.

  “We can send you a whole package—hats, T-shirts, shoes, you name it,” Brandon said. “What kind of shoes do you want?”

  David looked down at his Yeezy 2s. “I guess you can’t get me a pair of those.”

  Brandon grinned and was straight-up honest with him. “Yeah, these are hard to get, man. It took me four months on a waiting list. But I can get you almost anything else.”

  “Let me think about what I want. But what you want me to sign?”

  Brandon opened the box of red, black and gold Jordans as the rest of David’s teammates gathered around them.

  David eyed the brand new Jordans, confused.

  “You want me to sign these? Man, they’re tight.”

  “Yeah, D.T., two thousand thirteen. That’s all you need to sign. On all of them,” he added. Leon and Simba walked over with the pairs of shoes.

  David shrugged. “They may be worth something one day.”

  “As long as you keep balling like that,” Leon told him.

  “So, what does he get out of it?” one of David’s teammates spoke up. He hadn’t heard the package deal that Brandon had offered.

  Brandon answered with no hesitation. “He gets to be down with our Beast Team. And I know the NBA guys personally. My Uncle Three-P played ball with all of them.”

  He pointed behind him, using his Uncle Paul as a timely prop. That’s when all of the young ballers looked back at his uncle in embarrassment.

  “Wait a minute, you’re Paul ‘Three-Ball’ Weiller. My big brother used to use you on the NBA Two-K with the Phoenix Suns to shoot threes all the time. You played with Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire and Shawn Marion and all them, right?” asked a tall and lanky, light-brown kid. At six foot eight, he was already taller than Paul.

  Paul grinned, remembering the good old days in Phoenix. “Yeah, that was me.”

  “Aw, man, that’s crazy! Let me get your autograph for my brother,” the big kid said. He dug inside of his bag and pulled out his basketball. “Here, you can write it on this. I’ll just get another one.”

  That only validated Brandon’s position.

  “We need to take pictures too to prove that you guys owe me,” David suggested.

  Brandon nodded eagerly. “That’s a deal.” He planned to suggest the same himself for their Twitter and Instagram accounts.

  The basketball phenom signed their shoes, took a bunch of pictures with them and continued to talk about sneakers and basketball.

  “This looks like a regular thing for you,” the Adidas rep commented to Paul from behind. He finally decided to make himself known. He reached out his hand. “Michael Avery, southeast regional rep for Adidas.”

  “Oh, nice to meet you,” Paul said.

  “Yeah, I saw your nephew and his friends on the ESPN special. He’s something else.”

  “Yeah, he sure is,” Paul admitted.

  “So, you back him in his shoe aspirations?” the Adidas rep asked.

  Paul shrugged. “I guess I have no choice in the matter at this point. I’m the one who got him started with it all,” he admitted with a chuckle.

  Michael Avery nodded and pulled out his business card. “I know you’re out West, but if I could, I’d love to talk to you guys about some marketing and sales ideas that Brandon and The Beast Team could help us out with.”

  Paul looked at his Adidas business card and nodded back. “I’ll let the guys know.”

  “So, you obviously travel around the country quite a bit,” Michael assumed. He wasn’t done with his pitch yet.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “And that’s all we would need from him to do,” he suggested. “He would travel on the weekends with his friends and introduce a few new brands at the different events that we’ll be involved in over the summer.”

  Paul shook his head. “Unbelievable. All of this after one television special.”

  Michael laughed, embarrassed by the hype himself. “Maybe so, but we can’t deny that the kid has a gift for getting people excited over shoes. I mean, look at him.”

  At least thirty teenagers surrounded Brandon and his guys, taking pictures and talking about sneakers. And they were all excited about The Beast Team brand.

  “So, we can hit y’all up and order everything, right? What if we wanted our own colors of hats and shirts?”

  “We can do that too,” Simba told them.

  “But it depends on how many you order,” Brandon explained. “You would have to sell some shirts and hats for us in your area.”

  “We can do that.”

  Overhearing the support from the eager crowd, Michael Avery looked back at Paul. “In my business, you have people who make sales easily and others who have to work hard at it. And it’s obvious to me that your nephew’s a natural. So, you roll the dice with him.”

  Michael continued, now insisting, “Please, call me. They could all do a summer internship with Adidas that they would never forget. And we’ll teach them a lot more about the business.”

  Paul didn’t know what else to say. He was overwhelmed by the suddenness of it all. “I’ll talk to him about it later,” he said.

  “Are you still going to be in the area tomorrow morning?” Michael pressed him. “We could all do breakfast at the Waffle House or something—my treat.”

  Paul and the guys had two rooms at a Raleigh hotel for the night, but he didn’t want to promise anything for the morning.

  “Ahh, let me play that by ear. These guys have a concert to go to tonight, and you never know how early they’ll be up in the morning after a late night. They may not want to get up until noon,” Paul joked.

  “The J. Cole concert? My daughter and her friend are going to that,” Michael told him.

  “Yeah, what a coincidence. So ahh … I’ll just call you later on and see what happens.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  MOTIVATIONS

  BRANDON AND HIS guys left their second successful event in North Carolina excited. It built their confidence for much bigger aspirations.

  “I told you we should do our own events, Brandon,” Simba said. “Look how crazy that was. We could do our own Sneaker Con shows and make a killing.”

  “I’m just thinking about how much money we can make from selling our T-shirts and hats now,” Leon added. “If those guys are serious, they could help us to blow up out here.”

>   Brandon was more cautious. “We have to be careful how far we go with the whole Beast Team thing. I’m sure someone else has the rights to the name already. We just haven’t gotten big enough for them to come after us yet. But if we start selling that many T-shirts and hats …”

  Simba nodded, agreeing with him. “Yeah, then they’ll wait around for us to become rich before they ask us for a big split of the money or threaten to sue us.”

  Paul drove the rented Ford in silence, listening to it all.

  “We should try to legalize the name ourselves then. Or at least look into it,” Leon advised.

  Paul spoke up. “That’s a good idea. Let me make a few phone calls on that.”

  Brandon was surprised. “You will?”

  “Yeah, I mean, you guys are moving forward with it, right? So why not?” his uncle commented. “I know plenty of guys who trademarked names for T-shirts and things.”

  “You hear about Anthony Davis trademarking his eyebrows last year?” Leon mentioned.

  “Yeah, the unibrow,” Simba said. “That was crazy.”

  “No, what’s crazy is New Orleans calling themselves the Pelicans,” Brandon joked, laughing. He pumped his right fist and said, “Let’s go Pelicans! Let’s go Pelicans! Toot toooot!”

  Paul chuckled and decided to wait before bringing up the Adidas internship. He wanted to talk to them with cooler heads and not after leaving an AAU basketball tournament.

  “Okay, so, we’ll check into the hotel, change clothes and shoes, grab a bite to eat and then head over to the PNC Arena for the concert. Everybody got that?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the plan,” Brandon agreed as they pulled into the hotel parking lot.

  “J. Cole, here we come,” Leon cheered.

  >>>

  The guys wore their own mix and match of clothes to the concert. And Brandon was the only one who still wore a hat—a black, orange and purple Phoenix Suns baseball cap that he turned to the back. They then sat in the front row of the lower balcony to the right of the stage.

  “Man, these are good seats,” Simba commented. “I like when nothing is in front of us.”

  “I know, right,” Leon agreed. “We can see everything from here, even girls picking their noses,” he joked.