Los Angeles Clippers forward PJ Tucker doesn’t have the easiest role.
He is currently entering his 19th professional basketball season and has always been demanded by his teams as a defensive stopper, the ultimate glue that won an NBA championship with the Milwaukee Bucks.
But behind his profession lies one of the coolest passions – and collections – in the NBA. Tucker owns over 5,000 pairs of shoes and wore 37 different pairs during 18 games in his career.
Defender. 3-and-D specialist. Sneaker wearer, but not a collector.
Tucker, the player with arguably the most extensive shoe collection in the NBA, told me just that in an exclusive interview with FanSided. He wears sneakers, but he doesn’t think he collects them.
“I don’t even consider myself a collector,” Tucker said. “I’m more of a sneakers wearer. I don’t collect them, I just wear them. And playing basketball is just the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I just always liked the shoes I wore playing basketball. That kind of carried over into all of this.”
“This” is the amazing shoe closet that Tucker has, and it is from there that he took our call for this interview and his partnership with Raid.
“Raid found that 60% of Americans kill bugs with their shoes, and who wants that?” Tucker said. “I don’t want to waste my nice shoes on bugs and stuff them full of stuff. So they created an app where you can scan the shoe code and save at Raid through the app. So that’s pretty cool.”
When it comes to his favorite shoe, Tucker says the Kobe 4 is the absolute favorite.
“It checks all the boxes,” Tucker said.
But those aren’t the only shoes he wears to games. Tucker said he recently wore Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker’s new shoes and that on away trips he can sometimes take anywhere from 24 to 36 pairs with him, depending on how long the trip is.
“If it’s one or two games, I usually take a bag that fits about eight to 12 pairs,” Tucker said. “But if it’s a long trip and it’s five, six or seven games, then I take my big bag that fits 24 pairs. That way I can mix it up, and then that’s the bag the team takes, and I take my own personal bag. So usually there’s between 24 and 36 pairs on an away trip.”
Night after night, Tucker – and his shoes – are in the spotlight when he steps onto an NBA court, even though he’s not usually the one scoring the most points on his team.
Instead, he gets the toughest job in the NBA: defending superstars like Kevin Durabt, Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, Anthony Edwards and many others night after night.
“It’s a lot of mental homework,” Tucker said. “It’s a mindset thing. It’s a mindset thing to go out there every night and know that every game, somebody’s going to attack you. You’ve got to learn the plays, you’ve got to know where they’re going, how they’re playing. Does he shoot threes from the left or the right? Does he go downhill, to the right? Is he better at finishing — which way is he better at finishing?
“There are a lot of little things you have to learn before those encounters and before you do those things,” Tucker continued. But the game is about split-second decisions and having to make those decisions and keep the communication going. It’s tough. It’s really difficult. That’s what I stand for.
“And that’s something that motivates me to this day, to have these encounters and to be the one who does the dirty work in the game. I put my hat on and that’s why I love doing it so much.”
Over the course of his career, Tucker has played on some elite teams – the championship team from Milwaukee, of course – including the Houston Rockets on their way to the Western Conference finals with James Harden, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Miami Heat.
Although Tucker will never forget winning the championship, he told us something about his time in Houston that was special to him.
“I would say my first year in Houston was my favorite season,” Tucker said. “And my favorite team. We, all the guys on that team, just meshed so well together. I’ve never been on a team where the whole team spent as much time together as we did. In our free time, we were together. It was a couple of guys that were friends. And it was a lot of past relationships with different guys, it was just the perfect storm.
“And this year was a lot of fun. So I have to say it was (2017-18) the Rockets. That was a special team.”
Those Houston teams couldn’t overcome the Golden State Warriors dynasty of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, so Tucker’s championship moment had to wait until the 2020-21 season.
The Bucks made a late move for Tucker, adding the elite 3-and-D threat to a rotation that already included Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton.
Tucker played 29.6 minutes per game for the Bucks in the playoffs, averaging 4.3 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.0 steals per game. With a 40.4 percent 3-point shooting percentage in the playoffs, Tucker was a perfect midseason signing for Milwaukee.
And finally, he managed to overcome the hurdle and win the title, something he had been waiting for a long time.
“It was everything,” Tucker said of winning an NBA championship. “We had so many, you know, at least two where we really felt like we could have won it in Houston.”
Tucker mentioned that the Rockets really felt like they could win it all in the 2017-18 season before Chris Paul suffered a hamstring injury and helped Golden State end the series, but that didn’t stop him from fighting.
“Then I got the opportunity in Milwaukee right after that and was finally able to do it — to get that weight off my back was unbelievable, man,” Tucker said. “It was so much fun — something you chase for a long time to finally reach that pinnacle. It was everything and the hard thing about it is that once you do it, it just gets worse because you just want to feel it. You just want to do it over and over again, every single season. So that’s what you’re always striving for.”
And although Tucker calls himself a sneaker wearer, he will likely never wear the shoes he wore in the decisive Game 6 of the 2021 NBA Finals – the Kobe 6 from his Yeezy colorway pack – again.
“I still have those shoes,” Tucker said. “I haven’t worn them anymore. When I retire, I’ll probably do something with them. But that pair of shoes is still my favorite shoe from that year and one of my favorite shoes I’ve worn throughout my entire career. So it’s pretty cool to still have them.”
For more of my conversation with PJ Tucker, check out the YouTube link above. We also talked about some of the toughest players to defend, including a veteran and a young player that some fans might not expect to be a difficult task.
And if you no longer want to use your shoes to repel insects, just visit RaidShoeSaver.com Now through October 1st, scan your shoe tag and turn your shoe size into savings on Raid Ant & Roach Killer 26. The smaller your shoe size, the bigger the discount – because smaller shoes mean less surface area to kill insects, which means you need Raid even more!
