Rapper Fat Joe is a sneakerhead, so when he appeared on the Got Sole Podcast, he was asked to share his craziest story to get a pair of sneakers. That led Joe to hilariously recount getting choked by former NBA player and Jordan Brand athlete Mike Bibby and being blown away by his massive sneaker collection.
“Mike Bibby choked me out,” Joe said. “He got mad because he told me, ‘Yo, get whatever you want.’ I never even knew my knees could work like that. I jump up so f***ing high… I’m just grabbing s***, and he gets mad, and his family’s like, ‘Mike, you begged him to come.’ He was like, ‘F*** that. I wouldn’t go to his house and take his platinum plaques. He know what the f*** he’s taking.’
“Michael Jordan told me that Mike Bibby never got paid a dollar,” Joe stated. “He got paid in 18-wheelers of sneakers pulling up to his house. They paid him in sneakers… When I went to Michael Bibby’s house, still to this day, his s*** is like five storeys. So I get there, and Mike Bibby don’t trust nobody.
“He takes me to a sneaker room, and he got like seven locks,” Joe continued. “Remember when your grandfather would have like seven locks on the f***ing door?… He opens that s*** up, that’s bigger than any Foot Locker, anything you ever seen. You got ladders that go up to the fifth floor, and it’s just sneakers of sneakers of sneakers of sneakers of sneakers of sneakers. He got s*** I’ve never seen.
“In that five-storey biggest s*** I ever seen, I grabbed a three, and the man got furious,” Joe added. “He was like, ‘Oh no, you can’t take,’ I said, ‘Well, why you tell me to go ahead and get whatever I want?’ I said, ‘Let me just get one.’ He said, ‘All right, fair.’ So I took one Holy Grail.”
Bibby is known for his legendary collection, and he sure took extreme safety measures. Joe got a close look at it, and he certainly loved what he saw.
The Vancouver Grizzlies had selected Bibby with the second pick in the 1998 NBA Draft, and he signed with Michael Jordan’s Jordan Brand a year later in 1999. He was among the second set of athletes the brand had brought in, after Ray Allen, Vin Baker, Derek Anderson, Michael Finley, and Eddie Jones got onboard in 1997.
Mike Bibby On Getting Paid In Sneakers And “Choking” Fat Joe
Interestingly enough, Bibby has actually spoken about much of what Joe had to say here during an interview with Complex. He explained how the getting paid in sneakers deal came about.
“It wasn’t my decision, but that’s what happened,” Bibby said. “My last seven years, it was no payment as far as checks coming in to wear the shoe. It was, ‘Hey, you could stay with the brand.’ I wasn’t going to stay with the brand.
“I mean, I said I was going to stay with the brand, but there was no payment,” Bibby continued. “David Falk, super agent back then, same agent as Michael Jordan, was like, ‘Well, if he can’t get paid, we want to put this in the spot because can he get allotment of stuff for the year instead of getting paid?’ And they said, ‘Yeah.’ So we went that route. It was like, I wouldn’t say unlimited gear and shoes, but it was a good amount.”
You figured it wasn’t really Bibby’s call. At least that led to him having this insane collection. As for choking Joe, Bibby denied it.
“No, I mean he’s putting a lot on it,” Bibby stated. “But he had about 10 guys over here with him. And I was just showing him some stuff. And I remember looking back, and he had five or six one-of-ones, all the shoes that I have that I only had one pair left.
“And so I just looked back, and I told him like, ‘Joe, you can’t take all of them. Pick one and then you can take one,'” Bibby added. “In the back of my mind, I was hoping that please don’t take the 9 Lows, please don’t take the 9 Lows. And he ended up taking those. That was a shoe that I don’t think, I haven’t seen that anywhere. But other than that, I didn’t choke him. I definitely didn’t choke him.”
Bibby, who played 14 seasons in the NBA, said he just put his hand on Joe’s throat, but didn’t choke him. He was just a little bit upset that the rapper was taking all these shoes.
