Fakes of Nate Robinson’s ‘KryptoNate’ Shoes Sell for Over $22K at Auction

Nate Robinson's "Kryptonite Dunk" was not only the dunk that won him the contest, but also one of the highlights of All-Star weekend. So it's not surprising that memorabilia collectors would be willing to pay top dollar to own a piece of the event's history. It's also not surprising that someone would try to sell fakes in an attempt to cash in.

An auction appeared on eBay earlier this week, and it claimed to be selling the actual green Nike Flightposite Lites that Nate wore in the dunk contest. But once a little digging was done, it turned out the shoes were fake, but not before the auction ended with a final bid of $22,300.

Sporting News's First Cuts had tried to verify the authenticity of the kicks by contacting first the seller, and then a rep at Nike, but things were starting to look a bit shady. Later that evening, the site Kix and the City confirmed the fact that they were fake, by getting Nate himself to pose for the picture you see atop this post.

Nate still has his game worn/contest worn KryptoNate Nike Foamposite Lites in his hands, literally, as you can see in the pic above that was taken about 10 minutes ago. As a matter of fact, they haven't gone anywhere since the contest, and Nate wore them earlier today for the taping of tonight's David Letterman show.

So if you won the eBay pair, the final bid was above $20K, and have paid already, you got got. Sorry.

If you've spent any time perusing eBay auctions for these types of items, then you know that a) there are plenty of fakes out there, and b) there are even more phony bidders that have no intention of ever paying if they win the item that they're bidding on.

Let's hope the unscrupulous seller never got paid, and/or that the sucker optimistic bidder on this one was one of the phonies. Judging by the fact that the listing has been removed from eBay altogether, I'll go ahead and take a wild guess that no money actually changed hands.