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“Sneaker God P.J. Tucker pays homage to Michael Jordan”: Miami Heat forward tones down on flash but still brings the Heat with the Air Ships

Arun Sharma
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"Sneaker God P.J. Tucker pays homage to Michael Jordan": The Miami forward tones down on flash but still brought the Heat with the Air Ships

P.J. Tucker has owned almost every shoe known to man – he probably has a pair of moccasins from the stone age as well.

Whenever P.J. Tucker plays, it’s not his gameplays that are analyzed – it’s what he’s wearing. Known for his corner threes (maybe because that’s where the best cameras are), P.J. makes sure he has heat on his feet at all times. There has not been a day when he’s been spotted with simple sneakers.

He’s so obsessed with them, that Tucker carries an extra pair of shoes as his accessory.  So unnecessary! In the last game against the Hornets, he had to bring out some relics. In front of Michael Jordan, he hooped in the Black Cat’s old shoes. Not just any pair, the first pair he wore in the NBA before he became Air Jordan.

The Air Ships were the first pair of shoes Jordan wore before he got his sneaker deal. They look like a mix of an Air Jordan 1 and an Air Force 1 high. A clean silhouette and a precursor to the greatest sneaker deal in history. And P.J. did his warmups in them, in front of the G.O.A.T!

Also Read: “PJ Tucker going to hoop in these by tomorrow”: Eminem rocks Super Bowl eve while showing off his new Air Jordans, NBA Twitter makes a connection with the Heat star

P.J. Tucker is so well connected, he gets player exclusives, before the player himself

One person brave enough to challenge Tucker was DeMar DeRozan. DeMar has a sizeable collection himself but pales in comparison to Tucker. DeRozan brought out a pair of Kobes to practice and asked Tucker jokingly if he had those. The next time they met, P.J. walked up with a PE of DeMar’s only it didn’t even get to him yet!

This is the man who on Sneaker Shopping with Complex did his shopping on a computer with the warehouse inventory – he had everything on display at the store. He rents out a house big enough for a family of five, to keep it as a warehouse.

If one has to guesstimate his entire sneaker collection’s value, it would be somewhere in the 2-3 million dollar range. A whole year’s NBA salary was spent on curating the most epic sneaker collection – to each his own. He isn’t winning the MVP ever, so might as well win something off the court.

Also Read: “Thabo Sefolosha, the only player to ever play in Air Max 90s”: How the best Swiss basketball player of all-time had a special taste for sneakers

About the author

Arun Sharma

Arun Sharma

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Arun Sharma is an NBA Editor at The SportsRush. A double degree holder and a digital marketer by trade, Arun has always been a sports buff. He fell in love with the sport of basketball at a young age and has been a Lakers fan since 2006. What started as a Kobe Bryant obsession slowly turned into a lifelong connection with the purple and gold. Arun has been an ardent subscriber to the Mamba mentality and has shed tears for a celebrity death only once in his life. He believes January 26, 2020, was the turning point in the passage of time because Kobe was the glue holding things together. From just a Lakers bandwagoner to a basketball fanatic, Arun has spent 16 long years growing up along with the league. He thinks Stephen Curry has ruined basketball forever, and the mid-range game is a sight to behold. Sharma also has many opinions about football (not the American kind), F1, MotoGP, tennis, and cricket.

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