Beginning with the Marbury signing and the Rafer Alston discovery two years later, AND1 began to recruit more and more NBA players to wear their product, a major power play in competing with the bigger brands, such as Nike and Adidas. Players like Latrell Sprewell, Kevin Garnett and Jamal Crawford brought AND1 into the national spotlight and helped them secure shelf space in major footwear retailers, such as Foot Locker and FootAction. By the 2001 season, AND1 was second only to Nike in market share among NBA endorsees, a big part of them soon becoming the second largest basketball brand in the United States, only eight years after their inception.
AND1 is famous for the shoe known as the Tai Chi, famously worn by Vince Carter during the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest, where he put on one of the greatest NBA Slam Dunk Contest showings of all time.
The AND1 summer tours had already been going on from 1999, but in 2002, with the release of Mixtape 3, AND1 officially expanded their annual streetball tours into the Mixtape Tour. Legendary streetballers such as “Hot Sauce” and “The Professor” would go from court to court to challenge the greatest streetballers in one-on-one's, entertaining fans and providing much of the footage for the ensuing Mixtapes. The streetballers who prevailed through the very end of the summer tours would receive endorsement deals from AND1. From 2002 through 2008, the tours were televised live on ESPN under the name “Streetball” and competed with ESPN's “SportsCenter” for the highest ratings. The summer tours began in America but soon branched into more than 30 countries, giving them international fame and promoting the sale of their products in 130 countries and territories.
One of the most prominent appearances of AND1's sneakers, aside from Vince's dunk contest, was when Detroit Piston Chauncy Billups took home the MVP honors during the 2004 NBA Finals, wearing the AND1 Rise's. The mid-top sneakers’ clean and aggressive look matched “Mr. Big Shot” Billups’ game perfectly. In the Rises, Billups would average 21 points and 5 rebounds in the series, leading the Pistons to their first championship in 14 years and picking up the MVP award in the process.
AND1 is an American footwear and clothing company specializing in basketball shoes, clothing, and sporting goods. AND1 was founded on August 13, 1993, on the grounds of "All ball, nothing more". AND1 focuses strictly on basketball and is a subsidiary of Sequential Brands Group. AND1 continues to sponsor NBA athletes, as well as numerous high school and AAU teams in America.
The AND1 Mixtape Tour has featured streetball players of fame, including Skip to My Lou, Main Event, The Professor, Hot Sauce, Spyda, 50, and AO. AND1 players have made annual tours around America to recruit the next streetball legend. This recruiting has since been edited for airing as Street Ball on ESPN and ESPN2. It is also parodied in the movie Like Mike 2: Streetball as "Game On".
The tour was televised in half-hour "Streetball" segments on ESPN2, and were compiled into highlight reels, offered under the mark AND1 Mixtape, which were sold on DVD. AND1 has released 10 volumes. The first mixtape was AND1 Mixtape Volume 1 (1998) and the most recent is AND1 Mixtape X (2008). - Wikipedia
Shared for historical purposes. I do not own the rights.
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