Warrior Insider

Unlike baseball and football players – who rely on helmets, gloves and other equipment items – basketball players have it pretty simple.

Unless you’re talking about shoes.

“Oh, you gotta have the right shoes,” said Zane Johnson, a junior guard on the Hawaii basketball team. “You want something that feels comfortable, but looks good, too. But as long as they’re free, that’s fine with me. I think the ones we got are great.”

The Warriors are currently under a three-year shoe deal with adidas, and Johnson said he likes the selection of game shoes the team has this season. Each player has four pairs of game shoes: white shoes to match the home jerseys, green shoes to match the road jerseys, black shoes to match the special black jerseys, and a back-up pair that is half-green and half-white.

“We’re happy with adidas and we’re grateful that we’re able to get all the shoes and gear that we got,” Johnson said.

Hawaii assistant coach Brandyn Akana, who is in charge of ordering jerseys and shoes for the team, said there could be two more sets of shoes coming to the team before the end of this season.

“Adidias is really good to us,” Akana said. “They even gave us running shoes for our preseason (training), and regular (walking) shoes that we wear when we travel.”