Rucker Legend Has Beef With Nike

Filed under: Lakers, Western, Sports Business and Media

Before And1 infiltrated shopping malls and Hot Sauce was a regular on basic cable, the Rucker was the stuff of legend. Today, it's pure entertainment. But in the sixties, the Rucker was a showcase for a style of basketball that the country just wasn't ready for. Pros played their filthiest there; guys who never made it, who exist today in the form of tall tales, demanded they put on a show.

Yup, the stuff of legend. Nicknames that ring out without any first or last. Players capable of anything, who spurred the likes of Julius Erving and Wilt Chamberlain to new heights of creativity. Veritable gods of the blacktop. I could keep going, but I'm running out of hot air.

Actually, the Rucker roll of honor does consist of real people, although you wouldn't know it from the way they, and their universe, have been canonized, commodified, and abstracted over the last few years.

 

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Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/01/17/nike-rips-off-rucker-legend/