Some people are addicted to things that are bad for you, like online gambling or Toblerone bars or the Joe Rogan Experience. But I’ve always said that outside of my tremendous morphine dependency, I’ve been blessed with two relatively harmless addictions - sports cards and sneakers. 

As a kid the only thing I would ask for was basketball cards. You want a bike? No, I want a 2005/06 Bowman Draft Picks And Prospects Basketball Hobby Box. What about a video game? Again, I am asking you for a 2004/05 Topps Chrome Hobby Box. But can’t we get you some fun movies or a cool toy or something? I would prefer if everyone on both sides of my family would pool their resources and secure me one box of 2006/07 Bowman Elevation Basketball. Which I will open alone in my room and then slowly inventory and catalogue using the price guides I have chronologically stored in my closet. I’d memorize players’ stats and watch the games of the guys I pulled big cards of, trade the duds and buy short prints of the players I was higher on than most. It was like the stock market for a kid, except when your bets tank with cards - instead of losing your home in Majorca and blowing more white lines than a Noah Baumbach movie, you’d just end up with a couple more DeSagana Diop rookie cards than the next guy. It was the perfect hobby for a 65 year-old 8 year-old. 

Shoes were always a little different. They didn’t start out as an obsession. Yeah I’d always get a new pair for basketball season - some Lebron’s or Kevin Garnett’s I’d clean with a toothbrush and keep in the original box. But shoes then were mostly functional. I'd break them out twice a week to put up a triple-single stat line and get dropped in more church gyms than references to the Apostles. It wasn’t really till I grabbed a pair of “35,000 Degrees” KD 7’s (*forgive me, Lebron*) on release day that I really got what sneakers could be. I wore them straight out the store and started noticing people looking at them. When I wore them to school, people would stop me and start conversations about the shoes - and about KD - and basketball in general. And as an obsessive fan, there’s nothing I loved more. It was a way to start the conversations you wanted to be having with people, without having to start them. The shoes were your introduction. Ever since then, I started looking at sneakers less like clothing and more like stories you could wear, pieces of history you could slip into and walk around in.

A decade later, I’m somehow still as interested in boxes of cards and pairs of shoes as ever. Call it dedication or a prolonged suspension of mental development - either way I’m 27 and have a bigger leather and wax budget than a Keanu Reeves exhibit at Madame Tussauds’ - and there’s really no sign of it slowing down. So I figured I’d do something productive here for a change, and combine my interests. I took my 15 favorite basketball card sets of all time, and drew into them the 20 shoes in my sneaker rotation that I’ve gotten the most wear out over the years. So ignore the potential copyright infringement, and take a look below: