A guy turns up at Spurs practice barefoot. A rookie sees him and says he didn’t know you could just not wear shoes. The guy is Victor Wembanyama, and he told it to 60 Minutes, on CBS. Me, in that story, I hear an entrance.
Let me redo it for you, Saturday night, half past eight. The dark, well, half the dark, the caretaker keeps his neon lights on. The two school fête spotlights on the changing-room door. “Mesdames et messieurs, dames en heren, this is the moment. He arrives without shoes, he arrives without a sound…” Two seconds of silence. “Victor!” [jingle] And then what do you hear? Nothing. That’s the problem with going barefoot: no squeak from the sole. The whole basketball show rests on that sound, and he takes it away.
He says he tries to walk barefoot as much as possible. He says the feet play a much bigger role than people think. I believe him. But at the mic, I need a sound. So I’d put in a bass line, very soft, to stand in for the soles. The president’s nephew would offer to come in barefoot in his dinosaur costume, I’d say no, the feet are sewn on.
What I keep is the rookie. One sentence, one discovery, in the middle of practice: that’s a moment too, and me, I’d have announced it.
At our place, anyway, the caretaker wants clean soles. Just saying.
It’s true, we checked: RMC Sport.
