And a brash backup point guard playing in Beantown, who signed puma shoes to the brand with a point-blank proclamation: " I ain't f in' with nobody else but Puma ."More players are wearing Pumas on the court than at any other time in NBA history. They've joined the Puma basketball family, which has a deeper and more tantalizing history than most would imagine. As Converse, Nike, Adidas and Reebok starred on court from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

It all started in puma suede 1973, when Frazier became not only Puma's first signature athlete but also the first player in basketball history to get his own sneaker. At the time, Frazier fenty puma had a championship ring and was after another, averaging 21.1 points, 5.9 assists and a career-high 7.9 rebounds a game during the '72-'73 season as the All-Star point guard for the New York Knicks.Before Air Jordans, there were Puma Clydes. Frazier wanted a shoe that was wide, light and designed with sufficient interior padding. puma slides

Spoiler: Supershort deals with players would continuously haunt Puma's journey through basketball for decades. But it's a trend that briefly changed in the mid-1980s, when the brand began courting star players such as Nuggets small forward Alex English. During the 1982-83 NBA season, no one could put the ball in the basket quite like the slender 6-foot-7 English, who made all 82 puma fenty regular-season starts while posting an average of 28.4 points a game to win the league's scoring title.

One ad from the mid-'80s promoted the release of " seven new Ralph Sampson signature shoes from Puma "  for real, seven at once. And, similar to Frazier, the Rockets center soon got a shoe named after him: the Puma Ralph Sampson .Sampson's contract with Puma paid him approximately $400,000 from 1984 to 1989. "Ralph received a megadeal," said Petrick. "It was the first time a player got a significant check for an endorsement." After Sampson, a 21-year-old named Michael Jordan.

Spoiler: Supershort deals with players would continuously haunt Puma's journey through basketball for decades.

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