The clichéd thing to say here is that Adam "Air Rev"  Leaventon has forgotten more about sneakers than you'll ever know, but the truth is—and if you read this whole thing you'll understand—Adam doesn't seem to have forgotten a damn thing. He grew up a sneaker fanatic, paid his collector dues digging in musty basements for forgotten gems, then later parlayed his years of study into a career as an exec at Puma and DC Shoes. Right now he's testing free agency, but that's a good thing for us, as we were able to tap into his seemingly boundless knowledge. Read on and enjoy. Once upon a Borg, around about 1985, you already had your Bruins, your Shells and your Suedes, and maybe—if you were a fly type of player—your patent leather Concord Mids. If you lived in Philadelphia, New York or Baltimore, maybe you had your Air Force 1s. You tried to have something nobody ever saw before. You tried to customize your joints and put three pairs of laces in them to get that color combination just right and all yours. 

And at some point you might have said to yourself, “damn, I have laced my joints bar style, zigzag and checkerboard; I have jelly rolled them; and dyed them a shade of burgundy that no other cat has done.” Ultimately, however, they bit your style. How then, my fashionable friend, could you achieve the style they hadn’t obtained yet? For a very brief period of time around 1985-86, there was an unusual convergence of rap culture and European culture. FILA was an extremely high-end European proposition. Ellesse had a jewel on the back, and you couldn’t afford it. Brands like T.R.O.O.P. and British Knights were about to ride the Euro wave and make paper, and emcees were moving the dial with English accents, both legitimate and make-believe. In that moment, just before Nike put a headlock on the athletic lifestyle market, sidewalks were saturated with Nike, adidas and Puma. But step into your friendly neighborhood sporting goods store, and next to the catgut and Babolat, Kneissl and Prince, you were drawn in by a wall of something very different for your feet.

No one could tell you they were skippies either. Euro-pedigreed, and very new to the U.S.. Imported to the store by your favorite retailer. Imported to the block by you. The list you are about to read details out The 50 Greatest Tennis Sneakers of All Time. The list is necessarily personal and is generally based on the following criteria: Style: This is criteria number one. It is why I started buying shoes, and why most people reading Complex do also. Innovation: This is not an article about performance tennis. Still, innovation and forward progress are mission critical for footwear companies. Innovation can come in the form of performance technology, but can also come in the form of advances in fashion or in the manufacturing process. Story: I am a sucker for a good story. I like the G Vilas, but I really like what Guillermo Vilas was doing during Wimbledon in 1982. I wonder if he was doing it in Puma. Tennis shoes are dope, I am honored to have the opportunity to dialogue on this topic.

Feedback is 100 percent welcome. and I'll respond if I can. In the meantime, bust out your Shoe Goo and get to reading!Their logos adorn the shoes worn by the most famous athletes in the world. They actually bid for the right to provide an athlete the footwear he would use for his competitions. In return, the said athlete would provide his endorsement and, hopefully, the millions of adoring fans around the world would heed his advice and follow his example by buying sneakers from the same brand.old nike shoe boxes How many of us have bought our sports idol’s shoes hoping that we could replicate his moves, jump a little higher, run a little faster and control the ball a little better by gearing up with the same footwear brand? nike air jordan toddler shoesHere is a list of the top 10 most popular brands of sports shoes in the world.best male running shoes for flat feet

Nike is an American company founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. It changed its name in 1978 to Nike, who is the Greek goddess of victory. Its “Just Do It” slogan and swoosh logo are some of the most recognizable marketing items in the world today. It is considered to be the leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel.  Its first endorser was Ilie Nastase, a tennis star back in the 1970s from Romania. yellow nike shoes basketballIt also had legendary track athletes in its roster, including Steve Prefontaine, Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Sebastian Coe. baby tennis shoes size 6The company’s signing of Michael Jordan, however, proved to be its biggest coup.red nike shoes for toddlers Adolf Dassler established Adidas in 1948 in Germany.

It can trace its roots, however, to 1924 when the Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik was founded by Adolf and his brother, Rudolf. The two split up in 1949, however, with Rudolf establishing Puma. The basic design of Adidas is the three parallel bars, which is also incorporated in the company’s logo. Its endorsers include legendary basketball players like Pete Maravich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, James Worthy, John Havlicek and Elgin Baylor. Current athletes on its roster include Lionel Messi, Kaka, Lucas Moura, David Beckham, Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard. The company was founded in 1895 as J.W. Foster and Sons in England. It came from a desire by the founder to create a spiked running shoe for his sons. In 1958, his grandsons, Joe and Jeff, renamed the company as Reebok, which is the Afrikaan spelling of rhebok, a type of antelope or gazelle native to the continent. Paul Fireman brought it to the United States in 1979 after seeing a pair in an international trade show. Endorsers include Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Peyton Manning, Tim Lincecum and Justin Verlander.

Reebok has been a subsidiary of Adidas since 2005. Following the disagreement between Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, Adolf formed Adidas in 1948 while Rudolf countered with Ruda. He later changed it to Puma. The brothers had hit a goldmine before the split when they convinced Jesse Owens to wear their shoes in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Afterwards, the brothers started to grow apart. Both became members of the Nazi party, but Rudolf blamed his brother for his arrest by American soldiers. The two brands became bitter rivals and divided their town. Even their sons got involved after Puma violated an agreement not to outdo each other in trying to get Pele’s endorsement in the 1970 World Cup. Its other endorsers included Eusebio, Johan Cruyff, Joe Namath and Walt Frazier. Marquis Mills Converse established the company in 1908 as the Converse Rubber Shoe Company. In 1915, it began making tennis shoes. A company milestone occurred in 1917 when a basketball player named Charles H. Taylor walked into its office because of sore feet.

He designed a high-top sneaker that became the classic we know today as “Chuck Taylor.” It was the shoe worn by Wilt Chamberlain when he scored 100 points in an NBA game in 1962. Michael Jordan was also wearing a Converse when he converted the winning basket in the 1982 NCAA finals. It was the official shoes of the NBA for a long time, with legends like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Julius Erving all wearing it. Sadly, it has now disappeared from the league. The last player to wear a Converse on the court was Udonis Haslem, but he switched to Li-Ning in November 2012. Nike has owned Converse since 2003 after a $305 million buyout. New Balance was established in 1906 as the New Balance Arch Support Company. It seldom goes on expensive advertising campaigns. Its shoes are also typically more expensive than its rivals because it maintains manufacturing plants in the U.S. and the U.K. Its shoes are known by its model numbers as the company prefer not to give it names that would distract from the emphasis on the New Balance name.

Fila Ltd. was established in 1911 in Italy. It is known for its logo that features its name in snakelike letters. It used to be endorsed by Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg. It collapsed in 2003, however, forcing it to sell to a hedge fund company. Fila Korea, however, was a distinct company and it bought all the rights to the company in 2007. The brothers Art and Ernie Brunner of Switzerland founded k-Swiss in Los Angeles in 1966.  It was the first company to create leather tennis shoes. The white stripe on white leather design was considered a classic, so much so that Steven Nichols bought out the company in 1986. Popularity further increased with their “Put Your Spin on It” campaign that allowed users to customize the stripes’ color. It is an abbreviation for “anima sana in corpore sano,” which is Latin for a healthy soul in a healthy body. It was established in Japan in 1949 as Panmure Co. Ltd. Endorsers include Newcastle, Sunderland, Leeds and Aston Villa football teams.