Angelina Jolie, Bono, and Stephon Marbury

Last year's "most reviled athlete in New York" is hoping for an image boost with the release of his new sneaker, the Starbury. Seen as something of a brat among Knicks fans, a new shoe is an unlikely source of redemption.

Unless that shoe costs $14.98.

Marbury is entering the uber-profitable world of basketball shoes as a humanitarian. His aim is to make a hot, high quality shoe, one he promises to wear on the court, that everyone can afford. (Everyone but the Pakistani kid who made it). At face value, this is quite admirable. Steph doesn’t like the way kids have to hustle their parents (or whomever) to afford $150 Jordan's, LeBron's, Kobe's, or Goldsmith's. So Steph teamed up with discount retailer Steve and Barry's to exclusively manufacture and sell the shoes.

How do I know this? I spent the day with Steph.

After dinner and lots of drinks with my uncle Mark--reporter and sometimes host of ESPN's Outside the Lines, he invited me to join him on the job today, covering the Starbury shoe story.

The first stop was a Boys and Girls Club in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The Club had a contest for the kids to design a Starbury T-shirt, and the kid with the best design won $500. So Steph and two corporate dudes from Steve and Barry's staged a little press event to award the winning kid an oversized check. Steph grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn and spent every day playing hoops in the Boys and Girls Club gym. This new shoe, he says, was made for the kids who attend these low-income programs.

(Great side story: Mark's producer, Art Weinberg was with us all day. When Steph starts talking about what it was like to be a poor kid in Coney Island, Art turns to me and says, "whenever Steph talks about Coney Island, all I can think about is that part in Annie Hall when they flash back to Alvy's childhood growing up under the roller coaster in Coney Island. There is that guy, Joey Nichols, who shows young Alvy his cuff links and a tie pin, which are made from nickels, and say 'You see, nickels! You can always remember my name, just think of Joey five cents!' Then Alvy turns to walk away and says, 'what an asshole!'" I laugh and say, "you know, Art, I think you're the only person in this room [which is full of 100 black kids] who hears Coney Island and thinks about Annie Hall.")

Our next stop is the Steve and Barry's store in the Manhattan Mall on 34th street. I never heard of Steve and Barry's until today, but it's a pretty big operation. They have almost 200 stores accross the country, and their shtick is nothing in the store costs more than $9.98, bar the new Starbury shoes. So we get to the mall and the president of the company meets us and walks us around the store. The place is as big as an Old Navy, and he shows us the merchandise and tells us how they make it so cheap. It not that it's low quality stuff, he says, it's that they know the tricks to get the lowest cost manufacturing and distributing. He told us one story about these $9.89 letterman jackets. They are vinyl, not leather, which makes them cheaper in two ways. The obvious way is plastic is cheaper than leather, but the other way is much more tricky. It turns out that clothing retailers have to pay tariffs per item when the goods come from manufactures overseas. The per item tariffs on clothing are much higher than other goods, like plastic. So if the jacket is at least 51% vinyl, it can be counted as plastic rather than clothing, which brings the cost down even more. Clever. The clothing in the store is kind of dumpy, but I can understand the appeal. It's the same quality as Gap et al, but waaay less money. Personally I only wear Dulce and Gabanana, but I'm a Goldsmith. After the tour, we went to the board room where Steph was waiting to be interviewed. He's a pretty nice guy. No Karl Malone, though. And a bad hand shake. No firm grip. No eye contact.

If you want to catch Mark's piece, it will be on Outside the Lines next week-ish. I'll post the run times when I know them for sure. If you want the shoes, you'll have to email me. Steve and Barry havent hit Oregon or Utah yet, but I'm happy to send you some kicks in the mail.

But yall aint poor. So I charge more.


ps-- check out this bullshit.