Former Adidas exec James Gatto, Merl Code and Christian Dawkins were found guilty of paying high-profile basketball recruits to attend Kansas, Louisville and NC State.
Source: Guilty verdicts in college hoops pay-for-play trial
There are very good articles written by actual reporters on the trial that completed yesterday. The link above explains in greater detail than I could what took place. This post isn’t about the trial and adidas’ paying players. I was a college recruiter and I ran NCAA certified basketball camps. I sent a ton of players to college after spending five years learning how to be a head high school basketball coach. My background allows me to write posts on sneakers and basketball. I state all of this to get to my first point which is adidas was not alone in this Pay to Play scheme. They are simply the only ones to do it in a manner that left a paper trail. My main point is that as bad as this looks for adidas and the colleges they sponsor, this case will have very little bearing on adidas’ Basketball division.
A few years ago I wrote an extended post on the absence of adidas Basketball shoes in footwear stores. That was around the time that the Harden Vol. 1 released. adidas in the last two years has seen explosive growth, but basketball wasn’t in any of the best selling shoe categories for the brand. The Superstar, Stan Smith, NMD and UltraBOOST were adidas’ shining stars in the ground the brand gained in the North American market where the company had been struggling. The roster of adidas basketball signature athletes consists of Harden, Rose and Lillard. Neither player is exactly killing it in footwear sales, but adidas is dishing out major money for these players when their footwear could really be a part of the team bank styles, if footwear was only about the shoes that are selling, but footwear is fashion and it has been since the advent of Hip-Hop which basketball could be considered an unofficial facet of the culture.
I’ve written about why signature shoes are important, but in this instance, Kanye and Pharrell are better at selling shoes than adidas’ NBA athletes. Internationally Paul Pogba, a soccer player, is a better draw for the Three Stripes than NBA players; so why would I state that Signature shoes in basketball are important? Unfortunately I have to bring in a quote I wrote about Nike,
I have to explain how Nike came into prominence. It all began with selling Tiger shoes out of a van, Jeff Johnson and all of that, but let’s be serious, Nike didn’t become NIKE until Farrah Fawcett and Steve Prefontaine. Well, I also have to add in Sonny Vaccaro. Sonny was the man that introduced Nike to Jim Valvano and Sonny is the guy that created the sponsoring of colleges and coaches being paid to endorse a brand. Let’s start with why are Farrah and Pre so important? It was the building of the brand of Nike and these two people turned Nike into a marketing company instead of just a small upstart running shoe company. Farrah wore the Nike Cortez, and Pre, well the running boom was taking off in the 70s and Pre was America’s Golden Warrior Runner. Sonny though… Sonny made Nike, NIKE and whether anyone wants to acknowledge this or not, it’s the truth. Nike didn’t become what it was until they began to replace Adidas at the college level in basketball and on the sports fields. I’m moving back and forth, but stay with me. Pre was supposed to run in the Moscow Olympics, he died. That tragedy became Nike’s fuel and moving towards the 84 Olympics Nike started Athletics West and then splashed so many billboards across Los Angeles that people thought Nike was sponsoring the 84 Olympics. In those Olympics Carl Lewis in Nike became a damn star! Enough so that we let him screw up the national anthem, but that’s another story.
This long paragraph gets to the core of the issue for adidas. Nike is what it is because they have a history attached to athletic greatness. adidas also has this history, but it is long forgotten. Quick if I ask you to name a major moment in sneaker history rooted in sport, for adidas, what do you say?
That is the problem.
One of the most important athletic events in the history of the U.S. happened with a German making a shoe for a Black track star who defeated Hitler. Adi Dassler made the running shoe worn by Jesse Owens. That history hasn’t been cemented into the psyche of the U.S. and because of this adidas struggles when the brand has been at the core of some fantastic moments in sports history.
The case of adidas paying players to attend specific colleges underscores the issues for adidas in sports in the U.S. Dennis Smith Jr., who currently plays for the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA, was paid to attend NC State an adidas school. Smith Jr. signed with Under Armour. If you looked through the receipts of Gatto, Smith Jr. played for an adidas sponsored AAU team. That team probably got over 200K because they had a top ranked player. That player went on to an adidas school and was paid and in the end Under Armour gets the benefit of Dennis Smith Jr. progressing towards all star status. The Pay to Play case doesn’t hurt adidas. What hurts adidas in basketball is that the company doesn’t have a narrative and they’ve had their hands in sports from the beginning. They are the original basketball shoe company. Yes, I know Converse should hold that title, but look at some of the greatest moments in basketball and the Three Stripes was there. I can write the situation without even saying what game or who and the moments are all adidas:
1987 Keith Smart’s shot
The Skyhook
…
Damn.
When I consider adidas and iconic moments in basketball there aren’t many… there are some great moments, but adidas has never told us what they are. We don’t know the players. I of course remember special moments like Tyus Edney going coast to coast to help UCLA win a NCAA national championship. I hated the moment that Mario Chalmers brought heartache to the University of Memphis in Derrick Rose’s one season. There is Derrick Rose’s MVP and now Harden’s MVP, but many of my basketball memories were immortalized in posters of Iceman Gervin sitting on an ice throne (Nike), The Free Throw Line Dunk and 6 rings, The Decision, Kobe’s 5, all Swoosh moments.
adidas is not being hurt by this NCAA case. They are just the only ones to get caught, for the moment. adidas in basketball has been hurt by adidas, but it really doesn’t have to be that way. They can start writing a new chapter, but that’s going to take a lot of love… and with basketball sales waning, and Kanye and Pharrell selling more shoes does the brand really love basketball, or are they simply paying to play?
