In basketball, the phrase “and one” has two lives. In organized games like the NBA, it marks a foul made during a successful shot, awarding the basket plus a free throw. In pickup games, with no referees and often no free throws, it is pure bravado, a player’s way of telling an opponent, “I scored anyway, even though you fouled me. ” The athletic brand And 1 was built on that exact attitude, turning the trash talk of street basketball into a company that, for a brief and dazzling moment, stood beside Nike and Adidas.
The company began in 1993 as a small line of t-shirts. Founded by three recent graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, Seth Berger, Jay Gilbert, and Tom Austin, the idea grew out of a school project. The shirts featured a faceless, athletic figure delivering insulting one-liners. One of the most famous read, “Pass, save yourself the embarrassment.
” Another, more aggressive one, declared, “Go to church, pray you don’t guard me. ” That was the point. The brand was born from the culture of unorganized games at local parks, where flashy moves and verbal jabs were part of the game. Street ball had existed in some form since the invention of basketball, but the version known in the 1990s was rapidly gaining traction, and And 1 arrived to catapult it into the mainstream.
Within a few years, the t-shirt business exploded into one of the most sought-after athletic brands, competing with the giants of the industry. By the 2000s, both Activision and Ubisoft had published video games centered around the company. For many kids at the time, And 1 was the coolest brand imaginable. Today, however, that status is a distant memory.
The brand is now a discount alternative, found in stores like Walmart for shoppers unwilling to pay a premium for higher quality or more respected names. The company’s rise was built on the right players. Starting with Stephon Marbury, the number four overall pick in the 1996 NBA draft, And 1 signed young, emerging athletes who embodied the aggressive streetball attitude. These included players like Larry Johnson and Latrell Sprewell, who was perhaps best known for choking his coach during a practice.
The moment that lifted And 1 to another level came at the 2000 NBA dunk contest. Vince Carter delivered one of the most memorable performances in the event’s history while wearing a pair of red and white And 1 Tai Chi shoes. For one dunk, he put the ball between his legs, giving the footwear a perfect showcase. By 2001, the company hit its peak sales year, with roughly 40 percent of NBA players wearing their shoes.
With momentum behind them, And 1 became more aggressive, signing bigger, established names like Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups, who later won the NBA Finals while wearing the brand. It all sounded like an unqualified success. But a fundamental problem existed: And 1 had been built as an underground, counterculture brand, and the NBA was essentially the opposite of underground street ball. The company was picking a fight with far stronger competitors, giants it could not reasonably beat.
And 1 never came close to the size or resources of established companies like Nike and Adidas, which sold products for every sport and market worldwide. And 1’s peak sales of $281 million in 2001 shrinks in comparison to rivals generating revenue in the billions. As street ball grew more popular, And 1 was able to creep in under the radar. Then the big companies noticed.
In 2001, Nike released its famous “Freestyle” commercial, featuring NBA players and famous street ballers dribbling in time to music. The ad was later parodied in Scary Movie 2, keeping it in the public eye. Then, in 2003, Nike Battlegrounds, a street ball competition show, premiered on MTV. It was widely seen as a direct response to the And 1 mixtape tour.
That tour had become the heart of the brand. In the late 1990s, Rafer Alston, known as Skip to My Lou, was the street baller featured in And 1’s original VHS mixtape. The tape, a compilation of his flashy plays set to hip-hop, was distributed by And 1, often included with a product purchase. Like everything else with the company, it started as a genuine underground effort, then quickly went mainstream.
The first mixtape led to more, which led to the creation of the mixtape tour. Some of the best street ballers traveled to different cities, competing against local players, often one-on-one. Local hopefuls could earn a feature on future mixtapes or even a spot on the tour. In 2003, The Professor, a street baller who later became famous on YouTube, won a spot and quickly became one of the most recognizable figures associated with the brand, appearing with others on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
At its peak, the tour aired on ESPN and expanded to around thirty countries. Nike’s Battlegrounds show was a direct response to that growth, and the larger rivals began pulling talent away from And 1. Most top NBA players were already signed to Nike or Adidas, and those And 1 had endorsed increasingly left for better contracts. Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups both abandoned And 1 to sign what would become lifetime endorsement deals with Adidas.
By 2005, momentum was gone. That same year, the company was sold to American Sporting Goods. The sale deepened its troubles. In 2003, co-founder Tom Austin had already left.
In 2005, the two remaining founders, Seth Berger and Jay Gilbert, sold the business. The new owners seemed to lack the same passion and talent for that kind of company. As customers and audiences slipped away, they responded by downsizing, investing less in new designs and performance features. The mixtape tour shrank each year until it was discontinued.
The company became a stripped-down version of itself, and then the ownership chaos continued. The company that had bought And 1 was acquired by an even larger company, which then sold And 1 to another firm, which was later bought by a different company that filed for bankruptcy in 2021. Each corporate change was a distraction that made an unlikely comeback nearly impossible. Occasionally, And 1 attempted something that felt promising.
In 2012, it signed an endorsement deal with Lance Stephenson, who seemed the perfect representative, a young player known in New York street ball circles for his flashy style and later remembered for blowing in LeBron James’s ear during the 2014 NBA playoffs. In 2018, the company brought back Kevin Garnett as creative director and global ambassador. In 2026, it brought back The Professor as a brand ambassador and director of talent. These moves appeared positive, but it was hard to imagine that they mattered much without a partnership with a company possessing real money and influence.
And even then, the result would likely be far different from the original. Part of the problem was that street ball itself had declined. Younger players came up through the AAU system, and different playing styles were valued for injury prevention. The NBA’s stricter dress code, implemented in 2005, contributed to a more proper, professional image for the league.
A brand centered on street ball could only become so popular in that climate. If And 1 moved away from street ball, however, it would no longer feel like And 1 at all. Mixtapes also declined. Almost since the mixtape tour ended in 2009, most people watched basketball compilations on the internet.
Players no longer needed a company like And 1 to make their moves visible. The Professor proved that better than anyone, accumulating over two billion YouTube views since starting his channel in 2009. It was hardly surprising that a company built on street ball style and mixtapes was struggling in the 2020s. It was no longer a practical business model.
There was also the blunt truth that the brand had simply become lame. It was a serious problem for a fashion label. Years of cutbacks produced less impressive products, many of them manufactured by third parties through licensing deals. Even in its prime, the company had faced criticism for offering mixtape tour players contracts far below their worth, profiting from their vulnerable positions.
Trash talking and outright cockiness had also become less accepted in favor of humility. Whatever the cause, And 1 faded for roughly twenty-five years to the point where it no longer represented a desirable brand. It existed still, a cheaper, low-end alternative, a memory of a time when street ball ruled and a small t-shirt company had dared to compete with the giants.