What's the story with athlete endorsements? With the likes of Duff, Beckham and Zidane giving them the thumbs up, the fully customisable Adidas Tuneit football boots are presumably pretty good.

Costing anything between €180 and €400 the boots, made with interchangeable parts which players can switch to suit their game, the pitch, and the weather are, however, anything but good value.

Many young footballers looking for an edge have not been deterred by the price. In the run-up to the World Cup Adidas, aided by a crop of high-earning young professional footballers, managed to shift more than 750,000 pairs of the boots which pushed the company towards record-breaking sales of €1.2 billion.

High-profile athletes endorsing high-priced equipment for astronomical fees is not new. In the 1980s US basketball legend Michael Jordan loaned his name to a Nike, trainer and sales went through the roof. Air Jordans were (and still are) so popular - and so expensive - that it was not uncommon for teenagers to be mugged in US school yards as bigger, badder kids left them barefoot.

What is more novel is a high-profile athlete not only endorsing but wearing bargain-basement products for no fee to make a stand against the ludicrously high price tags attached to modern sports equipment. Step forward New York Knicks star Stephon Marbury who last month launched a $15 (€11.82) basketball shoe which he plans to wear on court when the new NBA season starts next month.

Since the middle of August his trainer, the Starbury One, has become something of a sensation. Despite its low cost it is, the manufacturers and Marbury insist, still made to the same quality as far more expensive Nikes, Adidas and Reeboks.

In New York City, Detroit and LA - its main markets so far - it is fast becoming the golden boot. Queues have started forming from 7am each day outside low-cost retailer Steve & Barry's - which has exclusive rights to the basketball shoe - as parents seek to get a pair of the trainers that are not only phenomenally cheap but increasingly cool.

Marbury says his motivation for launching the project has its origins in childhood memories of friends who could not afford top-of-the-range trainers. "You just can't afford it; spending $200 [ €158] for a pair of sneakers, that was unheard of," Marbury recently told the New York Times. "I would never go ask my mother for that. That was going to be an automatic no. I want to put my mark on history . . . All this is brand new, this is revolutionary, the thing that we're doing right now," he said.

Whatever about making history, Marbury is certainly making sense. If nothing else, by selling his trainers for so little he forces people to question why other brands have the high price tags they do.

The Nike Air - which sells for between $150 and $200 (€118-€158) - and the Starbury One are both made in China and both are good enough to withstand the rigours of the NBA courts. So parents are asking why the former is 10 times the price of the latter. And it's hard to find an answer - the gap between the two prices is ridiculous by any definition.

Critics have cast doubt on the long-term impact Marbury's low-cost shoe will have on an industry worth almost $50 billion (€40 billion) annually. A huge slice of that $50 billion pie comes from marketing hugely expensive and entirely unnecessary footware to gullible children, irrespective of the financial implications such a strategy has on their parents.

It has been said that while Marbury is big in New York, he lacks the pulling power of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods in the US, or David Beckham or Ronaldinho on this side of the Atlantic.

The president of Steve & Barry, Andy Todd, who is understandably an enthusiastic devotee of the latest Marbury marketing, strategy disagrees and believes the trainer can have a much wider impact. "It's become a movement. People have taken to this," he says. "And it's not a New York story at all. This is about Steph's vision to eliminate the pressure that parents and kids feel to spend top dollar on the latest sneakers and clothing."

Paddy Barry, director of strategy and planning at Dublin ad agency DDFH&B believes Marbury's strategy could work on the international stage but it would need the seal of approval of a star of the stature of Ronaldinho. "The price of an item does matter when it comes to marketing desirable 'must-have' items, even for kids," he says, "but the association with the right person would, at the very least, strengthen parents' arguments with their offspring."

Barry doubts whether Ireland currently has a big enough star to give sufficient cachet to a low-cost football boot or trainer. "Roy Keane, perhaps in his prime, but no one else comes to mind."

The New York Knicks player is currently on a 24-city, 20-day tour on which he is signing autographs, working out with high-school basketball teams and teaching children about taking responsibility. "I want to tell people all over the country that the game is over; being cool isn't about a price tag. Cool is about being a responsible person, taking care of your family, and spreading love to the world," he says.

Marbury, the fifth-highest-paid player in the NBA, will not be paid for endorsing the sneakers - instead he will get a percentage based on how well they sell.

Although he is hardly a household name on this side of the Atlantic he is commonly regarded in the US as an untypically generous athlete, something which makes his impassioned entreaties to "spread the love" easier for the cynics to take.

If his mission to make his Starbury One a cheaper, cooler alternative to the three stripes and the swoosh succeeds and manages to drive down the prices of the rival boots into the bargain, he might make history as he hopes.

And even if he doesn't, he will certainly and deservedly have won a place in the hearts of parents at home and abroad.