Occasionally it occurs to us that our job—namely, the whole going-through-people’s-stuff-and-then-writing-about-it part—is downright weird. And truth be told, the thought usually first goes through our heads when we find ourselves in situations that are surreal mostly because we’re seeing firsthand what defines normalcy in our subjects’ lives. It’s the everyday, even mundane moments, not necessarily the over-the-top glamorous ones; like when, after flying into Miami for the day, we find ourselves watching basketball player Amar’e Stoudemire’s four kids zip around on a fleet of scooters and hoverboards while his wife, Alexis, shows us the family’s avocado, lemon, and lime trees. This all happened before we pillaged his collection of Lanvin and Givenchy. It’s an entirely different workday than if we were working in accounting, you know?
We were somewhere between Stoudemire’s collection of rare, archival Nikes and custom outerwear when the man himself showed up. It’s completely cliché but merits mentioning: Amar’e is, well, tall. Six foot ten, to be exact. His height became even more of a focal point when he casually mentioned that given our shoot coinciding with Yom Kippur, he had been fasting (without so much as a sip of water) all day—that means all through his early-morning practice with the team, and continuing right through our shoot and right up until sundown. You’d think (understandably) this would slow things down considerably, but Stoudemire was more than game for just about everything we put him up to. He donned looks ranging from a white tuxedo to a tank and jeans in rapid succession, even pulling his Lincoln out of the garage for a few Cribs-like shots out front.
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