It’s almost New Year’s in 2017, and the weather is acting accordingly. The Thunder’s team plane has just touched down from Utah, a place that is somehow even colder than Oklahoma City.

The private charter doesn’t take jetways. Players have to walk down a flight of stairs and into the ice and crescendoing wind to catch their rides home from Will Rogers airport. Yet, as the Russell Westbrooks and Paul Georges of the world bundle up and head into the 2 a.m. brisk, one person is not dressed like the rest.

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Steven Adams is wearing athletic shorts and sandals. And there is nothing exceptional about it.

“He continuously only wears flip-flops everywhere. … His attire in cold weather is so odd,” said Josh Huestis, Adams’ at-the-time teammate. “He’ll wear flip-flops, shorts and then a big, heavy camo jacket with his Russian bomber hat.”

The camouflage is a mainstay in Adams’ wardrobe. Sometimes, he’ll flip the furry, Russian-style hat around and wear it backwards. It’s not a fashion statement. Adams says it’s more comfortable that way. Just about every piece of Adams’ wardrobe is about what’s more conveniently cozy — even if that places his attire into a category no one’s ever heard of: The beach-going hunting aficionado who’s closing down the vodka bar.

“He is really weird, man. I know,” said Enes Kanter, half of the former ‘Stache Bros duo. “A lot of people wear flip-flops but they wear socks, like really, really thick socks with it. But this guy literally wears nothing in the winter but just sandals. Just sandals. I’m like, you’re not gonna get sick? I think it’s just his genes are just different, man. I don’t know what kind of genes he got but it’s different.”

The sandals are Adams’ signature, Thunder orange with pictures of his mustachio’d face stamped on them, sent to him years ago from a company called iSlide, which took a promotional shot in the dark by custom creating flip-flops and blindly sending them his way hoping that one lucky day he might wear them in public. Little did they know they picked the perfect client.

“You know how I love free shit,” Adams said. “So, hell yeah! I took those guys. Fuckin’ happy as hell.”

On other days, Adams will drop the sandals altogether. When he’s really feeling himself, he’ll walk around in public sans shoes. He’s sauntered out of his pickup truck barefoot at the team’s practice facility and strolled into the building with those massive size 19s flopping onto parking lot concrete at every step. He’s done the same while navigating team hotels or showing up to the team bus.

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He’ll wait until he has to work out to put on socks and shoes, because, to paraphrase a line from one of his former teammates, why not?

“He’s fucking Fred Flintstone,” Andre Roberson said. “That’s a little bit far out there, but that’s Steve.”

But that’s Steve has become a sort of unofficial statement Adams’ teammates will use to describe him. Opponents think of the brute center as an intimidating enforcer on the inside. General managers annually vote him as one of the league’s toughest players, if not the very tops.

But guys who play with Adams know him as the dude who meanders around shoeless in public.

“It’s just comfy. … I don’t wear (flip-flops) while driving, so I just kick them off while driving and sometimes in the mornings, I just can’t be bothered, mate. That’s how lazy I get, mate,” he said. “It’s just, yeah you can slip them on but I’m like, ‘Agh, whatever.’ Let’s go. Then just walk in.”

Every once in a while, a formal event will force him to cover his toes. He shocked the world a few years ago when he wore a suit and tie with the footwear to match at Westbrook’s Oklahoma Hall of Fame induction.

“That’s how I dress up, to be honest,” Adams said. “I put on shoes and then people are like, ‘Wow. This guy’s fancy. Jesus.’ I go for the wow factor.”

But just to make it pop, Adams has to save his gaudiest, leather-shoed self for precise moments — because Steven Adams, inside a league where players obsess over fashion and where stars sign multimillion-dollar shoe deals, is the NBA’s pedial nudist.

When he does wear something with a closed toe, they’re giant boots large and homey enough that they might just be the ones the old woman famously lived in. He sports camouflage jackets and hats not because he’s some experienced hunter but because a close friend has a hunting store back home in New Zealand and gave the clothes to him. And he said, he’s about comfort … and free shit.

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And as for his on-court style, that’s no less wacky.

If you ever peek at Adams’ sneakers while he’s playing, you’ll notice something beyond their size. He yanks the tongues high enough on his ankles that they almost pour over the laces.

Even for a 7-footer, Adams’ body boasts this imposing width. His shoulders are broad enough that Jimmy Butler, one of the NBA’s most ferocious defenders, once said that Adams “hit me with one screen today, and I thought my life was over.” And his giant feet are what keep him stable on those clotheslines.

There is, after all, a reason Adams lets his toenails dance in the wind instead of covering them up as the rest of the world does. Even shoes that are his size don’t fit him quite right. His dogs are too wide.

So during games, Adams has stayed brand loyal to the extreme. While most NBA players rotate through playing shoes regularly, he does the opposite, and tries to make it through the entire season wearing only one pair. Not one type of shoe. The same damn two for 82 games.

“The problem is that the shoe technology, it kinda favors those whose foot isn’t open if that makes sense,” he said. “Just because I wear bare feet all the time, my toes are quite well spread apart. My physician would say, it’s ‘healthy foot.’ But the problem with that is, the reason why my toes are wide, spread out, there’s gaps between them, it doesn’t actually fit into these narrow shoes that they make now. You know what I mean? So, that’s one of the main things. Then, when I do try to go into a narrow shoe, my knee starts kicking in.”

Different players cycle through sneakers at different rates. Some guys like the feeling of a broken-in shoe more. Others prefer a fresher feel. Certain players change every 10 or 15 games. Others, every few. Some, even less.

Paul George wears a new pair of playing shoes every time he steps on the court; 82 games, 82 kicks. DeMar DeRozan switches it up every other game. Anthony Davis, who reels through playing shoes, calls Adams trying to make it through the season with the same sneakers “crazy.” Bradley Beal, who estimates he goes through anywhere from 25 to 40 playing shoes a season, uses the exact same descriptor: “That is so crazy,” he said.

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“Some people just want the comfort and more so, it’s bigs. They don’t wanna be switching in and out of shoes,” said fellow big man and former teammate Markieff Morris, who spins through 20 to 25 pairs a season. “Fucking Steven Adams wears like a (size) 24 feet. They’re like three arms put together. His feet are crazy.”

Years ago, Adams started wearing the Derrick Rose 7s, which Adidas began producing in 2014. The width worked well for Adams’ immense feet, so he stuck with them. But then arose an issue: 2014 was a long time ago, and Adidas doesn’t make the D. Rose 7s anymore. It’s not like Adams can just head to eBay to purchase an old pair. There aren’t many unused size 19s floating around the shoe abyss.

Even for a man on a $100 million contract, there’s not much relishing in the spoils of NBA shoe life, no new sneaker every game or every other one or even every other week or month. Like a kid on the pavement, he’s just trying to make them go for as long as he can.

“I try to make those ones last,” Adams said. “It sucks, too, because it gets to where there are rips and then I kinda judge how bad that rip is, whether it’s still safe enough for me to go and play. … The obvious (question teammates ask) is just, ‘Ah, when are you getting your shoes?’ It’s like, ‘Mate, it’s a rare thing. They don’t make the 2014s anymore.’ So, I have to really kinda be fucking (mindful) of my resources here, mate. It’s scarce.”

There’s nothing wrong with Adams’ feet. It’s not like the balls of them are scuffed or his toes are decrepit (even if they are cavernous). They’re just a couple of ginormous flippers. And so, why should he change his sneaker choices?

Why start wearing them away from basketball or worrying about toes that have relationships reminiscent of the north poles of two magnets pushing up against each other? Why lavish up with sandals when he’d rather dress down with fully exposed feet?

After all, he’s not the only one doing this. Adams has a close crew of high-school friends he goes home and visits every summer. They’re just as sandals-dependent, regardless of the season.

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“I’m not sure if it is (a) New Zealand (thing), itself, but it’s just like me and my mates,” he said. “We’re just fucking idiots, mate, to be honest.”

If he makes it through the entire year with one pair of playing shoes, Kanter predicts, “he might be the first one.”

Unfortunately for the history books, 2019-20 won’t be the year. Adams has already been forced to debut new sneakers this year.

The reasons why guys switch it up are obvious. NBA players care about shoes falling apart. They make six or seven or eight figures and want a firm feel, even if they use the same model of sneaker over and over again.

But the reasons why Adams doesn’t change a thing are just as clear. Sure, it’s health and practicality. He might never again compete in his preferred shoe once he runs out. Who knows what he’ll do then? He likes that it’s better for his knees. Still, NBA players change sneakers for reasons beyond performance.

The Pistons’ Langston Galloway switches out his shoes every game for newly designed ones inspired by his favorite cartoons. The Jazz’s Rudy Gobert has boasted ones to honor “One Piece,” an anime show Adams also adores.

If fashion isn’t just about looking good, and it’s merely showing your personality, then isn’t Adams’ entire vibe fashion at its finest? If anyone were going to make it through the season in one torn up pair of years-old D. Rose 7s, who better than the man who wears sandals in winter and goes barefoot in public for no reason other than because it’s what he wants to do?

“I take a different approach,” Adams said. “I’m not saying that I don’t care about fashion. I think there’s a time and place for it. I’m more of a practical sort of guy, if that makes sense, which seems ironic because I wear blazed shorts and slip-ons in fucking the middle of winter. So, maybe (I’m) half-practical.”

(Top photo: Zach Beeker / NBAE via Getty Images)