The Internet made the idea that everyone is separated by just six degrees evident to everyone. Just check Facebook or LinkedIn–you’re probably connected to a Supreme Court justice or an Olympic champ. But Sonny Vaccaro–basketball sneaker sage, raconteur and business giant–was connected to everybody in basketball and the sneaker business long before people talked much about networks. Vaccaro’s rolodex included seemingly everyone who’d ever laced up the high tops. Jon Weinbach and Dan Marks, makers of the new film Sole Man, which follows the 75-year-old Vaccaro’s remarkable career, say the whole basketball planet is really just “Six Degrees of Sonny.”
Connoisseurs of culture, Weinbach and Marks also note that “Sonny is the real-life ‘Forrest Gump’ of basketball.” They might have mentioned Johnny Appleseed, too, as a Sonny Vaccaro-level evangelist and businessman. Vacarro planted an entire industry virtually by himself. (Check out 30 for 30 Sole Man on ESPN.)
