NBA Guard Joe Johnson Should Stay Mum Re: Extravagant Sneaker Collection
Open mouth wide...and insert...one of the 436 pairs of never worn sneakers in your tricked out closet.
That's what NBA Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter and Union President Derek Fisher should have told Atlanta Hawk guard Joe Johnson before his interview with Stacey Pressman of ESPN The Magazine.
At a critical time in the eroding dialogue between the NBA Players Association and league owners, the last thing Hunter and Fisher need is adverse publicity surrounding NBA players' extravagant lifestyles. While Hunter and Fisher are negotiating hard on behalf of the players for increased revenue sharing, NBA players should be mum. Never uttering a word—especially to the media—about cars, cribs, clubs, or in Johnson's case, closets.
Because Johnson's closet is certainly no ordinary repository. It's definitely not a nook. Neither is it a humble, unobtrusive cubbyhole to store stuff.
Rather, only electronically accessible by Johnson's unique finger print entry, it's a 500-square foot walk-in, a climate-controlled cache to house the Hawk guard's envied collection of never worn Air Jordans.
Johnson revealed his treasured footwear ensemble in an interview with ESPN the Magazine's Stacey Pressman and offered that he eventually expects to actually don all of his kicks someday.
Additionally, Joe Johnson is no stranger to extravagance. His six-year, $120 million-plus contract not only supports his footwear fortress, but it also affords the star guard enough pocket change for a shark tank in his Little Rock, AR condominium as well as a massive Ford F-650 diesel powered, 200 gallon truck with three flat screens, front and rear cameras and a train horn to boot.
That thunderous train horn should easily help Hunter and Fisher find Johnson when they come looking—as they should—to insert one of those 436 pairs of never worn shoes into his mouth.
So, in the meantime, if I were Joe Johnson, I'd keep my mouth closed. In more ways than one.
Straight Talk. No Static.
MIKE—the ultimate talking head on sports!
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