This summer, the Big Baller Brand started taking orders for the Zo2 sneaker — the signature kicks of Lakers rookie guard Lonzo Ball.
But despite its eye-popping $495 price tag and a botched December rollout that earned the company an F from the Better Business Bureau, the sneakers, available only through the company’s website, are a hot commodity.
Williamsburg resident Jammel Cutler, a 31-year-old writer for Hoop Magazine who has a 200-plus-pair sneaker collection, hit the buy button last summer. Although some customers reportedly experienced long delays or wrong shipments, Cutler’s kicks arrived in December, but the shoes didn’t stay in his closet for long. Two days after he posted a photo of them on Twitter, a New York man offered to buy the sneakers for more than $800.
“Somebody was willing to pay almost double what I paid,” says Cutler. “I said, ‘All right, I’ll take it.’ ”
He says he wasn’t that impressed by the sneakers, anyway.
“The material looked like a Payless shoe,” he says.
Since overbearing hoops dad LaVar Ball revealed the Zo2 for his son Lonzo back in May, he’s only courted controversy. First, the $495 price tag was laughable: Steph Curry’s UA4 sneakers sell for $130, and LeBron James’ Nikes top out at around $185.
But curious hypebeasts bought them. In December, the NYPD had to calm the hordes of folks who showed up at a Big Baller Brand Big Apple pop-up shop. And, in January, Solange Knowles sported a Big Baller Brand T-shirt in a Twitter picture.
Few rookies are given signature shoes. But Lonzo declined to travel the traditional road of signing with Nike, Under Armour or Adidas. Instead, his father boasted that his Big Baller Brand upstart would slay the sneaker giants — before his son was even selected by the Lakers in the first round of the NBA draft last June.
“Big Baller Brand about to be your competition,” LaVar told a Nike executive who criticized him back in April.
As of last week, all Ball brothers have their own specialty shoe (LaMelo, 16, and LiAngelo, 19, both play professional hoops in Lithuania). LaMelo’s kicks are $395, but a price has yet to be set for LiAngelo’s recently unveiled blue-and-white G3 shoe.
Whether the company can sustain the buzz — and truly disrupt the basketball sneaker game — remains to be seen.
“A lot of people bought [the Zo2] not for performance but novelty,” says Chris Chase from WearTesters.com, a site that tests basketball shoes. Poor customer service aside, Chase gives the product high marks.‘I can’t remember the last time anyone cared for a signature shoe that much’
- Ray Polanco of NiceKicks.com
“I think it’s a good shoe,” Chase says. “If I had to wear it, I wouldn’t be complaining at all.”
The product is a collaboration between BBB and BrandBlack, a Skechers-backed company that has designed former Knick (and current Timberwolf) Jamal Crawford’s sneakers and has products in streetwear stores such as Kith and Union.
It’s also unlikely the Ball family will have to spend a dollar on marketing: Lonzo took to walking into arenas holding his game sneakers instead of tucking them away in a bag.
“When I saw Lonzo do that maybe a week later you saw other guys carrying their game shoes in their hands,” says Ray Polanco, the content director for the website Nice Kicks.
Polanco says Lonzo is mixing up an otherwise stale NBA atmosphere. “I can’t remember the last time anyone cared for a signature shoe that much.”