OAKLAND, Calif.—SoleSpace is a boutique sneaker shop only blocks away from the Golden State Warriors’ practice gym. It’s also a Golden State Warriors art gallery.

For the last month, and for at least another week, its walls have been covered with framed prints depicting the Warriors as they’ve never been seen before. There are illustrations of Stephen Curry as a samurai and Curry as a zombie, Curry wearing a bathrobe and Curry wearing a Louis Vuitton towel, Curry guarding Michael Jordan and Curry guarding a younger Curry. There are several pieces inspired by Kevin Durant leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder and one piece recasting Durant as the grim reaper. There is even a portrait of LeBron James—except this LeBron James is fat.

The work currently on display comes from an exhibit called Dubz Against the World that opened in SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco earlier this year. That show featured more than 300 basketball-themed pieces commissioned from more than 50 artists in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Japan, South Korea and across the U.S., especially the Bay Area.

Sole Space is a footwear and clothing store in Oakland, Calif. Photo: Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

That’s where the Warriors aren’t merely the NBA’s best team one game away from the title with a 3-0 lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Finals. They also have become a muse.

The original exhibit was curated by Vince Chang and Vinny Chiu, fans of basketball, art and basketball art, and sold everything from $5 pins to $3,500 oil paintings. There was an NBA Jam console. There was a pop-a-shot machine. There was even a pop-up barbershop.


More than 3,000 people attended the show. But one stood out, partly because he was 7-foot tall, and mostly because he plays for the Warriors.

Golden State center JaVale McGee was hard to miss. He posed with some of the pieces and took home a portrait of himself. It was an illustration of McGee riding around Haight-Ashbury with his sphynx cat.

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How did he find out about the exhibit? “Instagram,” he said. “It was crazy.”

Jeff Perlstein, the owner of SoleSpace, agreed with McGee’s assessment. He went to the last day of the SOMArts exhibit with his son and was so impressed he offered to keep it alive by hanging unsold art on the walls of his sneaker shop in downtown Oakland during the NBA playoffs. “We were blown away,” he said. “We couldn’t just let them pack up the show and close it.”

Jeff Perlstein owns Sole Space first saw the Dubz Against the World exhibit at SOMArts on the last day it was showing. He loved it so much he wanted to display 60 pieces in his store. Photo: Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

There are now more than 60 pieces from artists whose Twitter names are penciled alongside their work next to the prices. But not all of them are about the Warriors. Jack Perkins’s favorite piece in the Dubz Against the World exhibit is a black-and-white drawing of a stoic LeBron James grabbing the NBA championship trophy with mobs of angry Cleveland fans behind him and waves of elated Cleveland fans in front of him. “I wanted to show him, almost without emotion, somewhere between the hate and the love,” he said.

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Chang requested a piece from a local artist named Joe Wallace that’s more palatable to Golden State fans: a full-size portrait featuring the entire team. At the SOMArts exhibit, Wallace saw McGee staring at his work. He decided to introduce himself. Then he gave him another one of his creations: a T-shirt of Looney Tunes characters in Warriors gear. Not long afterward, McGee wore that T-shirt to a playoff game.


“For the subjects of your work to actually take time to even look and appreciate it all really makes the creative process worthwhile,” Wallace said.

McGee couldn’t drag any of his teammates to the exhibit when it was in San Francisco. But the Warriors soon may have an excuse to stop by the Oakland gallery. All they have to do is win one more game in the NBA Finals. “It’s part of the parade route,” Chiu said.