Tournament Throwbacks: How Mike Bibby Put the Foamposite on the Map

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After Penny Hardaway reached into his Nike Reps' Bag and asked about the Nike Air Foamposite One prototype and before he ever stepped onto an NBA court with the shoe on his feet, it was a young Point Guard at the University of Arizona named Mike Bibby who put his stamp on it forever. In the 1997 NCAA Tournament #4 seed Arizona was firing on all cylinders on their way to facing the top seeded Kansas Jayhawks in the Sweet 16 regional. 

It was the Wildcat's Nike Rep, Eric Lautenbach (now Nike's Director of College Basketball Sports Marketing) who would present one of the most iconic shoes in entire sneaker game. Where the Freshman Bibby would see an opportunity to put his mark in both the sneaker and College game, most guys on the team decided to pass. 

Miles Simon, who would soon become the Most Outstanding Player of the 97' NCAA Tournament, would decide to pass on the sneaker and stuck with his 1997 Nike Air Max Uptempos.

" I wore them in practice, but they were too slippery on the bottom" said Simons,

"But Mike did not care he thought they were hot and he was going to wear them regardless". 

The foams on Bibby's feet would see a lot of TV time as the Wildcats knocked off A loaded Jayhawks team in the Sweet Sixteen (a team that would feature future NBA Pros Paul "The Truth Pierce" and Scot Pollard) and then both North Carolina and Finally Kentucky in the National Championship. 

In the process Arizona beat three number one seeds to win the program's first Title, an impressive feat that we possibly may never see again in the Tournament. Bibby would see his name plastered onto the All-Final Four team and capped off a Tournament run for the ages with 19 points in the Championship game against UK. 

Nowadays seeing a Foamposite to a sneakerhead is as common as walking down the street and watching cars drive by. A lot of that has to do with the max output of numerous colorways from the Radars to the recently dropped University Blues. But at the time what Mike had put on his feet was revolutionary. NO ONE had seen those. It was different, it was cool, it was unique. And it had first been seen on one of basketball's biggest stages.

"Cats in the streets wouldn't say 'oh those are the foamposites', they'd say 'Oh he got the Arizonas!"


And while Bibby would go on to an impressive sneaker run in the NBA with multiple Jordan Brand PE's and colorways, it all started back in '97 when he put on the Royal Foams before anyone else (including Penny) ever saw them in a store.