Why Steph Curry Doesn’t Follow the NBA’s Unwritten Sneaker Code

Unspoken NBA codes be damned, Steph Curry has no problem with opponents wearing his shoes. 

Not wearing an opponent’s signature shoe has long been an NBA custom, as players didn’t want to be seen as complimenting or promoting a rival on the same court.

“To me that was dumb because it’s like either you’re going to beat them or not and the sign of respect is I’m going to beat you in your own shoes,” Curry says. 

Curry spoke to reporters recently at the National Basketball Players Association headquarters in Manhattan. 

The Warriors star, who was promoting his new Curry 12 shoes, said that he has changed shoes for a game before to avoid any overlap with De’Aaron Fox, who also represents Under Armour’s Curry Brand. But Curry says now that he has no issue with Fox wearing his own shoes against him, despite it violating the longtime NBA code.

Fox is set to launch his own signature shoe later this year.

“How are you supposed to talk s— to somebody when you got their shoe on?” Markieff Morris, a 13-year veteran, told The Athletic for a 2023 story on the tradition.

“Like Kobe used to say, ‘If somebody wore my shoe and I was playing against them, I knew I had them,’” Kevin Love said.

Subtract Curry and several other current NBA stars from that line of thinking. 

Before Adidas gave Anthony Edwards his own signature shoe, he was spotted in games wearing the shoe lines of James Harden and Damian Lillard.

For whatever reason, the stigma seems to resonate more with the game’s elders. When Kyrie Irving and Bobby Portis, then with the Nets and Knicks, respectively, got into an on-court skirmish in 2019, YES Network commentator and longtime NBA veteran Richard Jefferson observed, “Irving’s fighting a guy wearing his shoes.”  

Maybe the more interesting part of Curry’s rationale is that he’s changed his own shoes out of courtesy to Fox instead of the opposite. The Warriors and Kings are in the same division of the NBA and play each other four times a year, and Curry says it was on his mind when the teams battled in a playoff series in 2023. 

“I’d always do a pregame check,” Curry says. “Our pregame shoot was around the same time so I’d come out and look down the court and see what color kicks he had on, because sometimes he had on stuff before I debuted them on the court … I had a script of what I was going to wear – I think [it] changed one time because he might have had the same color on.”

Curry’s younger brother, Seth, a 10-year veteran currently with the Hornets, is a fellow Under Armour athlete and has always worn his brother’s shoes against him, citing family loyalty over competitiveness. 

“It’s family,” Seth Curry said. “I feel like it’s a problem if I wasn’t wearing his shoes.”

In addition to Curry, fellow stars such as George and Durant have found no problem with players wearing their own shoes against them, citing it as an homage to the work that goes into them. 

“It’s an honor that they respect me to wear my shoes, especially playing against me,” George told The Athletic last year. “I know a lot of guys that wear my shoes, and when they play me, they don’t want to throw it on because they think I might look at it as an edge that I’m having against them. But I don’t look at it that way. It’s cool they want to wear my shoes.”

Perhaps the biggest reason why the stars don’t care? It’s good for business. 

DeAaron Fox “rocks them no matter [if] we’re playing him or not,” Curry said. “Because he knows they’re going to help him.”