Trust me - I know that I can never do the 'sneaker history' of any of these shoes justice like the guys at @sneakerhistory or @weartesters can...the only thing I can do in this type of situation is take things from a more personal approach...meaning...what did these sneakers mean to me vs. what they meant to the world. So...I'm not expert on what they meant to the world, but I am an expert on what they meant to me.
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I never really had a TV growing up, so a lot of the stuff I knew about NBA culture and came from 3 sources:
1. basketball cards
2. magazines or newspapers
3. my friends
So from what I could understand (at the time), Shawn Kemp was really popular back in the 90's for little reason other than the fact that he could dunk really hard and he jumped straight to the pros from High School - which, back then, was a huge deal.
Other than collecting his Rookie Cards, I remember Shawn Kemp for 2 main reasons:
1. He was on the cover of the very first issue of SLAM Magazine I ever purchased
2. I saw him and GP and Vin Baker get their asses handed to them in the 1996 NBA Finals by the 72-10 Bulls (from a TV in Los Angeles)...
TBH, I know the Kamikaze I wasn't my favorite of his sigs, but I owned the Kamikaze II retro (which, I think, they recently renamed to 'Hurrikaze'), and I must say - @reebok did a great job on that retro...
Card #10 in the Sonny Vaccarro Years subset is up at link in bio!