Gabe Vincent and Max Strus of the Miami Heat sat next to each other at their lockers in Madison Square Garden an hour before a game against the Knicks. Strus was eating vegetables and rice, and Vincent was putting on his uniform after shooting practice.

But Vincent paused when he heard Strus talk about cleaning the soles of his shoes with the palm of his hand.

“Oh,” Vincent said incredulously, “are you a lick and clean guy?”

“I don’t lick,” Strus said, dropping his fork to respond. “I don’t lick. No no no.” His voice was tinged with outrage, as if Vincent had accused him of a crime. Vincent laughed.

Many NBA players are particular, some even superstitious, about how they make sure their shoes have enough traction for the court. Some use various methods of cleaning: the maligned lick and wipe, in which they rub saliva into the soles of their shoes, or a dry wipe, in which they use only their bare hands. Still, most swear by a cleaning pad found on the fringes of NBA stadiums. It’s officially called Slipp-Nott, but most players refer to it as a “sticky pad” or a “sticky mat”.

“I feel like the sticky mat is a ritual right now,” Sixers guard Shake Milton said. “It just feels like what you’re supposed to do.”

The Slipp-Nott was created in 1987 by Jorge Julian, who left a cushy job at Northrop Grumman in hopes of making basketball courts everywhere squeak with the sound of sneakers holding their ground.

There are translucent sheets on top of the Slipp-Nott smeared with adhesive substances (Julian declined to share the details so as not to help his competitors). Once a sheet absorbs too much dust or dirt to function properly, the user can tear it off for a new one.

The sticky pad comes in different sizes, but the standard is 26 by 26 inches so that large people who play basketball can place their feet on it. Some teams whose arenas have narrower sidelines, like the Utah Jazz, order a small or medium size version. Pads can be as small as 15 by 18 inches, which is large enough for a size 20 men’s shoe.

Julian’s first NBA buyer was the Los Angeles Clippers, who purchased the Slipp-Nott in 1988 at a reduced price of $70 per pad and gave Julian an arena staff pass. Back then, players used wet wipes and wiping methods to gain traction, so many were skeptical about the pad. To ease his concerns, Julian, using his personal pass, headed into the locker room with a VHS recorder to capture testimonials from coaches and players on the effectiveness of the pad.

Today most teams wear a Slipp-Nott and have custom pads with their team logos on them, but the price for those pads is now $588.

“He’s like my lifeline,” Golden State Warriors forward Anthony Lamb said. “I always play in the same shoes, so sometimes when I’m running out of shoes and my shoes are worn out, I’m going to need that sticky pad.”

Lamb plays in the black version of Nike’s Paul George 6 shoe; Worn pairs sit near his locker, with new pairs in boxes. He sometimes wears his shoes “five sets too many,” he said, and they get slippery.

When the Warriors played the New Orleans Pelicans in November, Lamb said, he didn’t get to sticky pad before entering the game and Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram made a move. that made him fall backwards on the court. Lamb was on the wrong end of a highlight and the butt of jokes in the Warriors locker room.

“My foot didn’t come down,” Lamb said as he laughed and cupped his face in his palms, “and I was thinking, Damn, I should have hit the sticky pad.”

Golden State forward Jonathan Kuminga might have the most shoes of anyone on the team, with countless pairs often lying in front of his locker and inside his locker drawers.

While many players use either the pad or a cleanup method, Kuminga generally doesn’t rely on either. He cleans the bottom of one shoe with the top of the other, partly because he saves time, he said, and because he’s been doing it since he was a kid. Because of that, many of the shoes in Kuminga’s locker look like new, except for the laces, which are torn and covered in dirt and dust.

“Hopefully, one day, if I have my own shoe, maybe I can add something to my laces so that every time I’m cleaning myself, I don’t have to mess up my shoelaces anymore,” Kuminga said as she held up a pair of shoes. with blue laces that had been dyed black.

Knicks big men Isaiah Hartenstein and Obi Toppin always end their pregame routine by cleaning their shoes at the Slipp-Nott. Hartenstein runs to the platform first, usually after the headlines are announced, and Toppin follows shortly after his teammate, ripping off a sheet as he finishes.

Hartenstein almost forgets to do his part of his routine before Game 5 against the Heat in the Eastern Conference semifinals, but Toppin punched him in the chest and pointed him toward the bag.

“It’s a ritual for us for sure,” Hartenstein said. “We have to do it before every game, and I always go first. One time we almost had a fight because he went first. That will never happen again.”

After the creation of Slipp-Nott in the late 1980s, Julian dominated the court traction market in the NBA. That changed in 2011 with the introduction of Court Grip, a bottled liquid product developed by Mission Athletecare that users could rub on the soles of their shoes. . Dwyane Wade, then a star for the Heat, was a partner.

Mission Athletecare founder and president Josh Shaw said then that it “would probably take six to 12 months for people to realize it’s outdated,” referring to Slipp-Nott. A brief rivalry for court traction supremacy began, but it was the Court Grip that ultimately became obsolete. The gray bottle is gone from the bench, and for now, the sticky pad has the hearts and soles of NBA players.