My Carolina Blue Jordans

In my complete lifetime, I think I owned about 4 pairs of Air Jordans. These were my favorite pair, but let me tell you a story. The year was 1996 or so in the heart of Atlanta, GA. Times were cool and I was roommates with my closest brother, Spencer. During those days he use to model his game after Derrick Chievous. I could be totally wrong on the name, but "The Cheese" is what his co-workers would call him. Derrick's NBA fame never panned out, but he was a great college standout.

So my brother and his band of co-workers called themselves being apart of a local pick-up league and they would play games after work. I would film them and give color play by play analysis, and the most funny games is when the refs use to cheat Spencer and his friends out of a game. You talking about a hot group of cats with nothing else better to do than watch low-quality tapes of them loosing in basketball.

Admittingly, I use to want some of the games to end with a controversial spin just to see them get hot at the refs. At times, it was the hardest thing to do by not laughing on the way home after the games. Well I would not do this story much justice without telling you who was apart of the "UPS Globe Trotters". You had "G" who was the prolific scorer, then there was John who was hitting Steph Curry shots before Steph Curry back in 1996-97 with a beer gut for days. Then there was the one guy who thought he was actually Michael Jordan, Rich (I think that was his name) and the rest were roles players and my brother, "The Cheese" was the defensive specialist.

So all season long, these guys would play with no uniforms on. I use to think to myself if they could cut those UPS uniforms down, they could have some uniforms. They could have called themselves The Brown Hornets, maybe not. So I use to play pick-up ball with them and a few other guys and that was their form of practice. I wasn't team eligible and they didn't like my style of play back then, because they already had a three-point shooter in John.

Ok, back to the Jordans! So tournament time comes and somehow they mustered up some white jerseys with the Carolina-blue accents. The jerseys were cool (at least to my memory) and I had these pairs of Carolina-blue Jordans that could set Spencer's jersey off just right. I was a bit of a snob for shoes back then, but I said its for a good cause and my brother would look good playing in them. I thought this would be motivation and I could once again witness the old Spencer I use to admire back in the Pontiac days of high flying and slashing to the hole for a quick score. I had something to look forward too and brag as I saw myself saying, "he did that in my shoes".

So as this tournament starts, "The Brown Hornets", decked in Carolina-blue jumped out on their opponent and had a commanding lead in the first half. Don't ask me how I remember, my memory is always accurate when I'm writing the story. Nonetheless, they lost whatever it was they started with, and lets just say that UPS didn't deliver that day. Most importantly, The Cheese did not have the scoring game that I expected. That boy was shooting bricks all over the place. Then he thought I didn't ask for my Jordans back because he scuffed them up that game pretty bad. I really didn't want them back after the performance he displayed. So nonetheless, about a month or so later, Spencer got me a pair of high-top Carolina-blue Adidas, Top-ten editions. Those joints were fresh. I was just glad he didn't return those Jordans to me. I never told him after all these years, but I never wanted them back after he played like Brooke Steppe in them. SMH