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BASKETBALL FACES SOME PRESSING ISSUES, BUT STILL SCORES FOR TEAM DEALERS. BY TOM RYAN PICKUP GAMES e basketball business in the team channel is facing several chal- lenges, but for team dealers any negatives are mostly being offset by other positive developments, including the shi toward sublimation that's reinvented the selling of uniforms — for the better. Dealers are praising not only the elevated design possible by sublimation techniques over traditional screenprint options, but how quickly providers have brought down prices and sped up turnaround times. O ther positives for basketball team sales include strong mo- mentum at the youth level, growing travel team organizations in several parts of the country and some signs of a pick-up in boys' participation coming out of the pandemic. On the downside, girls' participation is continuing to see a downward trend, out-of-stocks remain a frustration and dealers now find them- selves fending off scores of online competitors offering sublimation. Many dealers also lament that footwear, once a core component of the team basketball business, has dried up with many having walked away from the category. "It's a bygone era of showing up for a size run with all the kids," reports Michael Vick, owner at Mojo Sports, based in Henderson, KY. "It was a lot easier to put together a team package that included a team shoe." Vick says coaches have been increasingly letting their players select their own shoes as they're looking for styles that fit their identity. e decision is oen tied to what the NBA star player is wearing. "ey're hearing from their players, 'You're hampering my self-ex- pression, coach,'" says Vick. "Coaches are now hoping they don't get too much pushback from the team by saying, 'I don't care what you wear, but it's got to be black.'" Allowing players to wear any shoe as long as it's a certain color then presents inventory challenges since footwear vendors are looking for orders well ahead of the season. Much of the time servicing footwear is spent scrambling to find fill-ins for certain models and sizes that are out-of-stock at the vendor level. Without a retail store, returns are a Photo: U.S. Air Force / Rayna Grace 36 • January/February 2025 sportstyle • sportstylemag.com TEAM