How to Create Dion’s Sneakers: A Step-by-Step Guide

SU Grad and "self-hurt" guru Aaron Goldfarb had some free time this weekend. Enjoy.

While UNC fans are busy wondering how they’ll show their faces at the office Tuesday morning, and Pitt fans are busy trying to figure out how to possibly get to NYC before noon on Tuesday of Big East Tournament week, us Syracuse fans are busy tackling life’s more important questions. Such as: how can I get the awesome shoes Dion Waiters plays in?

Drunk on bourbon, and Mookie Jones’ eleventh man excellence, my carpet salesman friend and I embarked on a journey from which everybody who reads this will benefit.

Just as Rony Seikaly certainly doesn’t buy his Ermenegildo Zenga suits off the rack, Dion doesn’t settle for anything but customized kicks that make the sneakerheads drool. That’s right, Dion’s special Nike Zoom Kobe VI NikeiD model is not available at your corner Famous Footwear. So we have to go online. Clear your schedule for the next hour and let’s begin:

1. Go to this LINK.

2. Click on "English" and "USA"--unless you are kin of Fabricio de Melo.

3. Underneath the red "START CUSTOMIZING," click on View the NikeiD Basketball Collection.

4. Select the Nike Zoom Kobe VI Basketball Shoe - Men’s (sorry ladies).

5. For the love of god, DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THE PRICE. (Or be sure to have drunk enough bourbon to not care about insignificant things such as sneaker prices and your current bank account balance.)

6. Once on this screen, select "OR START BLANK" to get those despicable Lakers colors off your monitor.
Now you’re ready to build your work of art.

7. Hover your mouse over the front part of the shoe where it says "Venomenon" (ignoring the fact that Kobe doesn’t coin as cool of terms as Dion) to make the word "OUTSOLE" appear.

8. That will make a 1. OUTSOLE pop up where you are asked to choose the playing surface for your tread ("COURT" or "ASPHALT"). Dion obviously uses COURT, and since a bar’s hardwood floors are close enough to that, we will also opt for COURT.

9. For the color, select "MIDNIGHT NAVY" and hit NEXT.

NOTE: From this point forward, we will need to make sure the shoe has the exactly correct combination of "MIDNIGHT NAVY" and "ORANGE BLAZE."

10. BASE -- choose the "CROSSOVER FADE" design.

11. CHOOSE A FADE PATTERN -- select "ORANGE BLAZE/MIDNIGHT NAVY"
OK, time to check your work. If your screen doesn’t currently look like this, you might be accidentally making replica Matt TomasZOOMski’s.

12. SWOOSH AND KOBE LOGO -- CHOOSE A COLOR defaults to WHITE which we will remain on.

13. LACE -- Dion may have been tempted to go ORANGE BLAZE, an obvious choice, but a rookie mistake. He’s matured in the off-season, both as a player, a teammate, and a designer of athletic footwear. He instead wisely opts for MIDNIGHT NAVY here, an excellent choice in aesthetic balance as it really accentuates the blaziness of the ORANGE BLAZE tongue.

14. LINING -- MIDNIGHT NAVY

15. HEEL -- ORANGE BLAZE

16. HEEL ACCENT -- MIDNIGHT NAVY

17. MIDSOLE -- MIDNIGHT NAVY for both the midsole and the midsole accent

18. LONG iD -- Now is time for a little fun and creative license. On the backside of the tongue, we are allowed to add our own personal iD. Only one person in the world knows the secret message on the backside of Dion’s own kicks, and that’s the man himself (unless you count the child laborer who stitched them, #homeless&hungry). Using creative investigating techniques only a carpet salesman could know, my friend was able to get reliable confirmation that Dion DOES take advantage of this opportunity to further customize.

So we are forced to speculate, again using ORANGE BLAZE.

We went with, predictably, "H and H," Dion’s personal mantra ("Humble and Hungry"). Unfortunately, one is not able to use an ampersand. Likewise, we can’t eliminate the facsimile autograph of a once-accused rapist from our heel. On the bright side, it will serve as a constant reminder to Dion as to the importance of an iron-clad prenuptial agreement.

19. SHORT iD -- This is an incredibly important step that cannot be overlooked, for if you accidentally use Nike’s default of #72, you’ve just built a dream sneaker for senior offensive guard Nick Lepak

We opted for Dion’s #3 in MIDNIGHT NAVY but you could have just as easily selected #44 or #1 or your personal lucky number (If Ron Morris is reading, you might select #4).

20. You are basically done at this point and all that is left to do is admire your work of art via the right tool bar ROTATE, ZOOM, and VIEW options.

21. Finally, go to the top--again ignoring the price. Choose your SIZE and ADD TO CART. NOTE: A CPA friend of mine confirmed that the Kobe Bryant Legal Defense Fund is NOT a charitable organization, and as such this purchase is in fact NOT tax deductible.

Congrats! You are now the proud owner of the world’s finest shoes. Your shoes will arrive in five weeks. Wait, five weeks?! Hurry the f*** up Chinese child laborer, America needs Dion’s shoes! During that interim, considering grabbing some fine cedar shoe trees in order to properly care for your kicks when they aren’t on your feet (Dion is purported to use shoe trees from Salvatore Ferragamo, a personal friend).

Now I just need to figure out where Dion gets those dope orange socks...

Aaron Goldfarb is the author of How to Fail: The Self-Hurt Guide, now available for $2.99 on Kindle and available in "customized" autographed paperbacks on his website. Follow him on Twitter @aarongoldfarb and follow the carpet salesman @baseballpundit too.