Beautiful basketball shoes

This is more or less a poker blog, but my favourite sport is basketball.
(Quick digression – I don’t consider poker to be a sport. It is competitive, it requires skill, but there is absolutely no athletic ability necessary to succeed at it. It is a contest of intellect, math, psychology and strategy. Thus, it is a game, not a sport).
At any rate, as a hoops-head, I have a natural obsession with basketball sneakers. If I won the World Series of Poker main event, one of my first “investments” would be a few pairs of sweet shoes.
The reason I bring up the topic is, I had a rare chance to see some true collector’s item kicks last week at the Abbotsford Collegiate Snowball Classic, a local high school boys basketball tournament.
Tournament organizers imported a team from Los Angeles – the Fairfax High School Lions. Fairfax is one of only a handful of U.S. high schools that are sponsored by Nike. Part of their deal with the Swoosh is, they get special-edition shoes produced each year featuring the school name and colours. This season, they’re rocking the LeBron Nike Zoom Soldier IV. Note the word FAIRFAX printed vertically on the heel, and the LeBron lion logo on the ankle, which matches the team nickname. (Check the sneaker blog nikelebron.net for looks at more special edition Fairfax LeBrons dating back to 2007).
The photo at the top of this post is of Fairfax’s white shoes that go with their home uniform; the one at the bottom is the corresponding black road edition. Sooooo cool.