And1 hot sauce biography of michael
AND1
American sportswear and footwear company
For other uses, see And 1 (disambiguation).
AND1 is an American footwear and clothing company specializing in basketball shoes, clothing, and sporting goods. AND1 was founded on August 13, The company focuses strictly on basketball and is a subsidiary of Galaxy Universal.
The company sponsors NBA athletes, as well as numerous high school and AAU teams in the United States.
History
Rise to fame
In , AND1 began as a graduate school project partnership of Jay Coen Gilbert, Seth Berger, and Tom Austin while they were graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The company name is derived from a phrase used by basketballbroadcasters to denote a free throw awarded to a player against whom a foul has been committed while scoring a goal.
The brand started by selling T-shirts out of the back of a car. Early advertising strategies included other basketball slogans and trash talk, such as "Pass. Save Yourself The Embarrassment". They marketed their shirts to street basketball players. Foot Locker began to sell the shirts, and within the second year of launching, the business reached 1, stores across America.
In mid of , NBA star Stephon Marbury became the first spokesman for AND1. With Marbury's signing, AND1 launched its first pair of basketball sneakers, its entry into the footwear category.
In late , a videotape containing streetball stunts was delivered to AND1 by Marquise Kelly, coach of the Benjamin Cardozo High school team in Queens, New York. The tape contained low quality camera moves, poor resolution and nearly indecipherable audio featuring a streetballer by the name of Rafer Alston. At the time, Alston was a student at Fresno State who had entered the NBA draft. The videotape would soon be known as the "
The Oral History of the AND1 Mixtape Tour
Image via Complex Original
The story of the AND1 Mixtape Tour, as told by the streetball players who lived it.
As told to Ralph Warner (@SoloWarnerBro), Angel Diaz (@ADiaz) and Jose Martinez (@ZayMarty)
The year was Michael Jordan had just solidified his legacy as the GOAT with “The Final” Shot against the Utah Jazz in the highest-rated Finals series in NBA history. NBA popularity was at an all-time high but the game was about to change. That same year, a grainy video of Rafer “Skip 2 My Lou” Alston was making rounds. Put together by DJ Set Free, the footage showed Alston doing work in the streetball Mecca known as Rucker Park. The fusion of tracks by Rawkus artists including a new rapper by the name of Mos Def with Skip 2 My Lou’s slick moves united two worlds that had been synonymous since the ‘80s: Streetball and hip-hop.
While the multi-millionaires in the league ruled the basketball universe from fall through the spring, summer has always belonged to the streetballers. Starting 15 years ago in , and lasting throughout the mids, the summers would belong to the AND1 streetballers. Jordan’s retirement and the league’s lockout a few months later would send the NBA into a decline in popularity from throughout the early aughts. Meanwhile, by the end of over , copies of the "The Skip Tape" a.k.a. AND1 Mixtape Vo1. 1, had been sold.
From that point through the mid s, names like Shane “The Dribbling Machine” Woney, Anthony “Half Man, Half Amazing” Heyward, Waliyy “Main Event” Dixon, Grayson “The Professor” Boucher, and Philip “Hot Sauce” Champion became household names. Rather than rattling off the stats their favorite players were putting up on the hardwood, kids were talking about the wizardry going down on the blacktop. Let's just come out and say it: from the late ‘90s through the mid s AND1 was bigger than the NBA.
The Nike “Freestyle” commercial that dropped in ?
The Story Behind 'The Greatest Mixtape Ever' Documentary, 'AO' Responds to NBA Players
It’s only right that The Greatest Mixtape Ever, a documentary on the AND1 movement, came from a young Black creator gettin’ it out the mud. In , documentary co-creator Brian Mickens was looking for a story to tell. He had previously pitched a 30 for 30 on the Michigan State Spartans team that went to the National Championship, but it didn’t work out. At that point though, the recent Grand Valley State University grad was tired of working factory jobs. He knew he had to make something shake.
“I just started watching old YouTube videos [and I was] like, “Man! AND1 was groundbreaking!,” Mickens recalls over the phone. “And I was like, ‘I need to do a documentary on this.”
He’d go to Georgia Tech every day to plot out the project.
“I would write the description. I would write how I wanted it shot. I would write the players I wanted to be involved with, the rundown. I would do this every day, every day for like a few months.”
Four years later, that work resulted in an hour-long special that chronicled one of the most important basketball movements ever. The show debuted last week on ESPN, and predominantly covers the first four volumes of the AND1 Mixtape series, where Set Free mashed up underground rap with clips of playground legends like Rafer “Skip To My Lou” Alston, Waliyy “Main Event” Dixon, Anthony “Half Man, Half Amazing” Heyward, Aaron “AO” Owens, and many more.
The project is a result of Mickens’ resourcefulness and persistence. A chance meeting with Michael Smith at a BET Awards afterparty led to a later phone call with Smith and Scoop Jackson who heard his idea for an AND1 doc and linked him with The Undefeated.
“I [didn’t] have no money,” Mickens recalls. “So my friends come over with some money and fly me there and I meet with [The Undefeated]. I pitch it to them and they love it. They’re like, ‘This is too big. We need to forward you to E Rafer Alston was the inspiration for the first Mixtape and is a longtime AND1 endorsee. He took his legendary streetball exploits all the way to the NBA, and remains with AND1 through today. Grayson Boucher joined AND1 in during their "Survivor" contest. His streetball reputation grew to legendary heights after hitting a game-winner at Madison Square Garden during the Tour. Champion played on the Mixtape Tour from its inception in , and remains one of AND1’s most recognized Mixtape players. Born in NYC and raised in Philadelphia, Set Free is responsible for fusing together hip-hop and streetball in the AND1 Mixtape series. Shane Woney is a Bronx native who built his streetball reputation at Rucker Park before joining AND1 for the first year of the Mixtape tour. Anthony Heyward is from Brooklyn and gained his moniker after Rucker MC Duke Tango witnessed him elevate and dunk over a player twice his size. Tim Gittens was one of the first streetballers to sign with AND1. His name rings bells on every NYC court. The Linden, N.J. streetball legend worked with AND1 representatives to develop the idea of having the original AND1 Mixtape game and tour. Dixon played on the tour from through Straight out of Philly, Aaron Owens is known for his filthy ball-handling skills and dishing some of the best alley-oops in the game. At a young age - sixth grade to be exact - John Humphrey threw down his first dunk. Since then, the North Carolina native has amazed spectators with his leaping ability at 6'1" while staying true to the fundamentals of the game. Lonnie Harrell possessed a fundamentally sound game and could score points in bunches, which became evident when he dropped 55 points o
SKIP TO MY LOU
THE PROFESSOR
PHILIP "HOT SAUCE" CHAMPION
DJ SET FREE
DRIBBLE MACHINE
HALF MAN, HALF AMAZING
HEADACHE
MAIN EVENT
AO
HELICOPTER
PRIME OBJECTIVE