As with most things related to Nike, the marketing wormed its way into my head far before the shoes ever graced my feet. The first time I saw them, I thought they were a solid “meh,” but the commercial was catchy.
I have a very specific memory of my friend Isaac and I, on a nice spring day in or around the year 2000, at UCSC, walking to Accounting class via Oakes Path, when we spotted a dude walking about 25 feet ahead of us. He had some bounce to his step, so much so that we both zeroed in on the unmistakable heel shot almost immediately. We started mimicking the commercial without question. Isaac started it off with almost a whisper: “boing,” and then I whispered just a little bit louder: “boing.” We alternated as the volume grew and grew until we were nearly yelling at each other, when the guy eventually turned around and we broke out into laughter.
It was stupid and childish, sure, but another testament to the reality of Nike’s marketing at the time: sometimes serious, sometimes stupid, but always memorable.
The shoe I’m referring to is the Nike Shox BB4. The first Nike basketball shoe worn and affectionately known by purists as “Vince Carter’s first Nike,” and also the first basketball shoe to feature Nike’s Shox technology.
I can’t remember which pair I bought first. The black and red, or the white and black patent. Maybe it was the white and red. Nah, I know I picked those up later. Whichever pair was the first, I don’t think it really matters because I rocked the hell out of them all. The early pairs bring back memories of me as a youngster spending the vast majority of my free time on basketball courts throughout my college years. Both pairs are featured in several of my “young guy MySpace basketball pics,” and both pairs saw several courts in both California and New York.
When I’ve taken a break from the sport due to sickness or injury, I always return triumphantly with my BB4s. Or when I want to try something else, I always end up switching back to them, usually about halfway through the session. There’s something about the neoprene toebox, the low profile, and the heel cup that complements my style of play precisely. And there’s a reason I keep coming back.
The thing is, for me, the Shox BB4 is the perfect basketball shoe. And if you know me, you know that I love playing basketball.
Maybe it was a need to stand out. Or a need to fit in. Or a feeling that once I found “the one,” something out there might just be a smidge better. For whatever reason, I tried my hand, er, feet, in hundreds of other pairs over the years. And nothing measured up. The grass certainly wasn’t any greener.
I’d say if I didn’t try out other shoes, despite knowing BB4s were my favorite, the sneaker gods would have done a pretty poor job at marketing. Because yeah, maybe the marketing wasn’t as direct, but the sentiment that shoe technology does nothing but improve over time convinced me that the BB4 wasn’t enough.
So maybe that’s why marketing exists in the first place. Lord knows we’ve watched corporations and multinationals accept the fact that second-rate and inferior products do little but result in more sales.
And maybe that’s the real point of marketing. I’m not saying that new shoes are bad, or that innovation isn’t real, but that marketing does a great job of convincing us that staying put is a failure of the imagination. If we’re not upgrading, we’re somehow old or falling behind. Loyalty as stagnation. Comfort as complacency.
Through hundreds of experiments, I realized that none of the shoes I tried were solving the problem I had. They were solving a problem Nike needed me to believe I had. Lighter. Faster. More explosive. More responsive. They marketed it all magnificently, but none of that shit matters to me when I’m trying to bust some dude’s ass without thinking about how bad my feet actually hurt.
BB4s gave me that freedom. BB4s continue to give me that freedom. The BB4 never asked me to adjust anything. It just showed up and did its job. And every time I left chasing something newer, I came back not because of nostalgia or a throwback to the past, but because it worked.
I always swore I’d grow up to be a man who tries and experiences new things, and I’ve kept that at the forefront of my mind for years. But when it comes to actual basketball shoes, time has turned me. I’ve found what works, and improvement for the sake of improvement has proven to be little more than disruption. I ain’t movin’ on from the BB4 for nothing.
The BB4 didn’t age with me. I aged into it. And I’d say I made that decision probably 15 years ago, the year I won my first back-to-back intramural league championship trophies. Seriously. There’s comfort in that decision, but not the kind people mean when they say “comfortable.” It’s trust. And trust doesn’t need anything more.
That’s probably why I made the card.
Not as a flex. Not as nostalgia. But as a physical acknowledgment that sometimes the thing that lasts isn’t the thing that changed the most, but the thing that stayed useful while everything else kept nudging me elsewhere. The card isn’t about the BB4 being perfect. It’s about recognizing the moment you stop believing that perfect is out there somewhere, just waiting for you to buy it.
Marketing needs motion. It needs dissatisfaction. It needs you to believe that staying still is a missed opportunity. But life doesn’t really work that way. At some point, you find something that fits, something that works, something that doesn’t ask you to be anyone other than who you already are. That’s when you learn to stop paying attention to the gimmicks. And if you’re lucky, you recognize it before you spend another twenty years looking past it.
I’ve played in a lot of shoes. I’ve chased better. I’ve chased newer. I’ve chased the promise that this next pair would unlock something I was missing. And every time, I came back to the same place. Same model. Same feel. Same certainty.
That’s not failure.
That’s arrival.
The long way around.
One last thing before I let this one sit.
If you want to pay a subscription fee - pay it. For the first 25 people that sign up to a paid subscription (it’s like $30/year or something) - I’ll send you a BB4 tribute card—made from an actual pair of Nike Shox BB4s that I cut up myself. Not a replica. Not a reprint. A physical fragment of the exact shoe this essay is about.
It’s not a flex. It’s not merch. It’s a small artifact meant to live somewhere real, the same way the shoe did for me.
If this writing has ever made you feel seen, or helped you reframe something you thought you already understood, that’s what you’d be supporting.