Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 9:00 am  |  7 responses

Gallery: First Overall Draft Picks’ Kicks

From React Juice to the Zig Slash.

Draft night is a funny thing. Some years there are guys who are absolute can’t misses and other years, you’re lucky if your team comes away with anything to show for itself. You can have all of the experts you want sitting at a table a few hundred feet away from David Stern, you can take all of the scouts that teams have littered across the globe and when it comes down to it, the GM goes with his gut and hopes he’s employed a year from now.

The sneaker companies go through the same thing every year with the top pick in the draft. Sure, his upside is tremendous, but is he charismatic? If not, will he be down the road? Could he develop a fan base? Would fans want to wear his shoes? You might have the greatest power forward to ever play the game signing an endorsement deal and as much as he’s bound to walk into the Hall of Fame in 20 years, he still might not carry an ounce of weight with the sneaker-buying market. Ultimately, you don’t know. No one really knows anything on either side of the game until the ball gets thrown up in the air for the first time at the end of October.

Hindsight and this gallery are 20/20. Some of these guys stuck, some slid off the wall and some of them ended up selling some companies a lot of sneakers. Next year at this time, we should know where Kyrie Irving stands in all of this. As it stands right now, no one knows. The Cavs and everyone around Irving are holding their collective breath, waiting for October…or for a lockout-shortened NBA season to start.

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  • ripslam Posted: Jun.24 at 10:22 am
    I’m sorry, but could you guys at least try to find out the names of the shoes before you make a gallery where half the entries are just the manufacturer name? Also that pic of Blake Griffin is quite clearly not from 2009.

  • francis s Posted: Jun.24 at 12:30 pm
    G-RoB the Rail #4

  • Ryne Nelson Posted: Jun.24 at 1:13 pm
    I think I have some of those cards… And Elton Brand was dope as a Bull.

  • JL Posted: Jun.24 at 2:09 pm
    Nike Air Pippen 2 for olowokandi. First overall pick and wearing pippen’s shoes. lol

  • hambone Posted: Jun.24 at 2:12 pm
    lebron was ballin in timbalands

  • BadBadLeroyBrown Posted: Jun.26 at 3:11 pm
    @ripslam The only pics of Professor Griff from 09 would be of him sitting on the bench in a suit, seeing as how he was injured that whole season. And of course, A.I. has on the sickest pair in the whole list.

  • LilKDub503 Posted: Jun.27 at 8:44 pm
    The Questions are LEGEND. I want another pair.

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