Remember Coy Sheppard, the senior kicker from Mendenhall (Miss.) High School who claimed in 2010 that he was booted from the football team for wearing pink cleats in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
Contrast that with the response received by Grant Kajiwara Bantilan - a 17-year-old point guard on East San Jose, Calif.'s Independence High School basketball team - when he started wearing bright pink sneakers on the court to honor his mother, who is battling breast cancer. "Dude, that's awesome," head coach Greg Duarte told Bantilan, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Duarte then went out and bought a pair of his own.
The entire team has followed the lead of the 76ers' shortest player (Bantilan stands 5 feet, 6 inches tall); all but three players are wearing pink Nikes that bear Kobe Bryant's name - and that's only because they couldn't find the pink shoe in their size.
And, according to the paper, all but a few opposing players and fans have applauded Independence High's pink crusade. "I think it's cool," Khong Do, a basketball player from Evergreen Valley High, which lost to the 76ers last week, told reporter Joe Rodriguez. "It's for breast cancer, you know."
To see images of the 76ers' players and their coach in their bright-colored shoes, click here.
