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Nice Kicks: Since it all happened in a flash to you, what do you remember most about that moment?
Dee Brown: Well, it’s kind of funny to hear people, 25 years later, call me the Godfather of the Dunk Contest just because I was the first one that got the marketing side into it. Before then, it was just straight dunking, but I was kind of responsible for the side show and pizzaz aspect of it. When I talked to family after it happened, a lot of them were like, ‘Dude, do you know what you just did? You basically just started the shoe wars. It’s about to be on between Nike and Reebok.’ At that time, it was really just Nike and Reebok. Nobody really had marketed signature shoes besides Michael Jordan and maybe Charles Barkley as far as Nike. You had guys like Patrick Ewing with their own brand, but as far as Nike and Reebok, it was pretty much Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and me as far as marketed shoes. It was weird because I was thinking to myself: there’s Patrick Ewing, a future Hall of Famer with the Ewing Brand; Michael Jordan, a future Hall of Famer with his shoes; and there’s Charles Barkley, a future Hall of Famer with his Nikes; then there’s me, a rookie wearing a Reebok Pump.
People really identified me with that shoe. If you go to anybody who plays sports and say ‘Reebok Pump,’ one of the first things that comes to their mind is Dee Brown, which makes me feel good that I’m identified with a shoe of that stature. It makes me feel like a did something bigger than I set out to do because that was not my intention at all. My intention was to win the contest; not to market the shoes. I wanted to win. Heck, I was trying to get that check of $25,000 [Laughs]. I wanted the trophy because that’s all I saw when I watched previous contests, you know? I saw Michael; I saw Dominique Wilkins; I saw Spud Webb. So, the best part of winning that contest was being in the same breath as the Jordans, the Wilkins and the Webbs and obviously just holding that trophy up at the end. Those are my fondest memories. I didn’t care about anything else, but the next day, I kinda found out what I did for that shoe.
Dee Brown holding his ’91 NBA Slam Dunk ContestNice Kicks: What do you vividly remember after winning the dunk contest?
Dee Brown: It was all over the place. Reebok put an ad out that took up one whole page of USA Today, and it really shocked me. Larry Bird teased me forever after that. He used to say, ‘Before the dunk contest, everybody wanted a pair of Converse Weapons like me and wanted to dunk like me.’ He used to say that after every single game after that. It’s funny because Bird, McHale and Parish were all trying to give me tips before the dunk contest. I told them, “Y’all have never dunked in your lives!” I was starting for the Celtics at that time, but winning the dunk contest and pumping my shoes superseded anything I was doing for the Celtics.
Nice Kicks: What did the guys over at Reebok tell you after you literally pumped them up?
Dee Brown: They were like, ‘Do you know what you just did?’ They were just letting me know that I created a big dent in the sneaker industry by pumping up the shoes. They basically said I changed Reebok overnight. I think that following calendar year was one of the only years Reebok outsold Jordans because every school and every team wanted the Pumps after that. It was great for me because Reebok really took a liking towards me after that. They gave me my own shoe, which was the Reebok D-Times and they made me a slew of colorways. I still have all of those at my crib in Atlanta locked away. At the time, Dominique Wilkins, myself and Reggie Lewis were the only guys Reebok was marketing at the time, so it was really mind-blowing to me. It wasn’t until Iverson that they started heavily marketing again. Shaq had a couple of shoes in between time, but most people don’t remember all of Shaq’s Reeboks.
