Reggie Miller was not a very well-liked basketball player. Perhaps that is an understatement. People hated him, and he thrived on it. After all, he did name his autobiography I Love Being the Enemy. He actively sought out the ire of opponents and opposing fans alike, tormenting both Michael Jordan AND Spike Lee. Outside of Indiana—and perhaps his native L.A.—he wasn’t what you’d call marketable. He became a Hall of Famer without ever being blessed with a signature shoe. But if you were paying attention throughout his career, you’d know that his sneaker game was as cold as his jumpshot.
It didn’t start out that way. Miller wore Pumas at UCLA, then Spot-Bilts during his first two seasons with Indiana. He even wore Xavier McDaniel’s ski-boot like, plastic-clad X-Press, which looked like a walking boot on Miller’s spindly frame. Then, sometime in ‘89 he signed with Nike, and things started to get interesting.
You can basically split Miller’s tenure with Nike into three phases. The first, from roughly ‘89 to ‘93, might have been the best. He started off in the Air Flight 89 Low (the only Air Flight 89 most people are familiar with) and wore it in his first All-Star appearance in 1990 before transitioning into the Alpha Force 2, a forefoot-strapped low-top most notably worn by Charles Barkley. Miller clearly wasn’t a Force guy though, what with his wispy frame and long-distance range, so he wound up in the original Air Flight Huarache before transitioning into Nike’s Flight series, as worn by the likes of Ron Harper and Gerald Wilkins. Miller was never much a high-flyer himself, but since Nike didn’t have a Shoot line, this was the best they could do.
The second phase, which probably started around the start of the ‘93 season and ran until Michael Jordan’s final Bulls retirement in 1998, could be considered the takedown era. Miller wore a dizzying array of Nike silhouettes, most of which you could find on the wall of your local sporting goods store for about $79.99. There were some outliers—he did wear a pair of Air Jordan IXs at least once—but it was mostly stuff like lower-tier Flight shoes, the Air Much Uptempo and a shoe that’s dropping in upgraded form this week, the Air Money. Those weren’t exactly a signature shoe for Miller, but they were as close as he’d get—his 31 embroidered huge on the heels.
The thing is, that wasn’t all that unusual back then. Miller wore the Zoom Flight 95 inspired Air Thrill Flight, then again so did fellow All-Star Gary Payton. Miller wore the Air Wayup, essentially a Penny 1 takedown, but so did Scottie Pippen. Miller just happened to take it deeper than most. He wore shoes on-court that not only no one cares about now, no one cared about them then. In the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals against the Bulls, he wore the Air Scorin’ Uptempo, a shoe even Nike employees would be hard pressed to remember. And while Payton and Pippen went on to get signature models, Miller never did. He sailed through the golden era of Nike basketball on a lower tier, only returning to top-shelf shoes with the Air Max Uptempo and Total Max Uptempo in ‘97 and ‘98.
The third phase—the one most people are familiar with—began with the start of the lockout-delayed ‘99 season, with Miller an official member of the Jordan Brand family. Mike apparently did not see fit to pass the torch while he was still playing, but after he retired, Miller started the season in a wild variety of team shoes along with the XIV. He’s perhaps best known for his black and yellow Air Jordan XV PEs, which were one of the better makeups of that shoe, and the pair he during his Pacers’ sole run to the NBA Finals in 2000. If Jordan is serious about making the XV a thing in 2018, a retro of this PE would be a good place to start.
The following season, Miller got into retros. Literally. Yes, he wore the appropriately dorky Jumpman team shoes, but he also got plenty of court time in Concord XIs, and in one February game against the Milwaukee Bucks, faced off against Bucks guard Ray Allen in matching Cool Grey XIs. He also got PEs of the Air Jordan XVI, the 36-year-old old-timer getting the same treatment as youngsters Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson.
Following a brief stint the next season in a mix of anonymous Nikes, ones you’d order in Team Bank colors from Eastbay, he returned to team Jordans. And in late winter early spring of 2003 he played in the Air Jordan XI IE low for a whole mess of games before switching into the Air Jordan XVII low. His final season was primarily played in an Air Jordan XIX SE PE, “KILLA31” embroidered on the back of the heels. He played his final game in a pair of Jordan Work’m PEs, that same “KILLA 31” embroidered on the outer ankles.
Reggie Miller may seem like an unlikely sneaker icon, but hell, everything about his career was unlikely. The California kid spent 18 seasons in Indianapolis, playing at least 80 games in 11 of them. He became a five-time All-Star and a two-time gold medalist, took Jordan’s Bulls to a Game 7 in the ‘98 Eastern Conference Finals. Impressed Jordan enough that he got to spend nearly the whole rest of his career in his shoes. Maybe it’s time you got yourself a pair of Reggies.
