Steve Pankow ’11 stands in the entryway to the Chicago Bulls equipment room deep inside the United Center holding a Nike Zoom Kobe 4 “Fade to Black” basketball shoe. There’s a five-inch gash above the shoe’s hard rubber midsole that Pankow wiggles four fingers through as part of an equipment manager’s postmortem examination.
Appears InLess than 24 hours earlier, the shoe was in fine working condition. It was on the left foot of Bulls guard Alex Caruso, who had helped engineer what was about to be a stunning upset of the Western Conference-leading Minnesota Timberwolves. But late in the game as Caruso and company were putting the finishing touches on the win, the 2023 NBA All-Defensive First Team selection jumped to contest a shot from Minnesota all-star Anthony Edwards. Caruso landed awkwardly as the shoe exploded.
Pankow was among the first to realize what had happened. He sprang into action, sprinting 40 yards to the locker room to retrieve a backup pair of shoes.
“When something like that happens, it’s an adrenaline rush,” Pankow said. “Whether it’s blood on a jersey or a blown-out shoe, that’s what we prepare for, and that’s what gets me cranked up.”
Amid a late-season playoff push, Caruso couldn’t wait even the few seconds Pankow needed for the retrieval, instead finishing out the game wearing teammate Dalen Terry’s Adidas models. The Bulls won the game, 109-101.
Pankow recounts it all the next day at the mouth of the equipment room as the Bulls prepare for a game against the Atlanta Hawks that’s still a couple hours from tipoff. Bulls players and personnel coming from every direction squeeze past Pankow as they complete their pregame routines. Eventually Caruso arrives, puts his arm around Pankow, and laments the demise of his favorite pair of shoes.
Pankow is the Bulls’ head equipment manager and team travel coordinator. At 6-foot-4, he’s as tall as some players but skinnier than all of them. A Sharpie marker clipped to the collar of his team-issued polo serves as his trademark piece of flair, indicating to fans who surround the team bus when the Bulls arrive in another NBA city or kids who line the tunnel when the team takes the court that Pankow is not one they’ll see on the court that night.
He doesn’t play for the team, but he’s an integral part of it.
Pankow got his start in sports at Illinois State University after sending an email to then-head football coach Denver Johnson the summer before his freshman year asking Johnson if there was anything he could do for the team. That led to four years as a student manager, internships with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts, and a job with Navy athletics before a full-circle moment when he returned to Illinois State as a full-time equipment manager.
Now in his “dream job,” Pankow travels full time with the Bulls, sits behind the bench, and loves every minute of it. He’s one of at least eight Illinois State alumni working full time for the NBA team. Though none of them are scoring points or dishing out assists, they form the team behind the team. Several of them got their starts in sports at Illinois State.
“It’s different every day,” Pankow said. “That’s the part I love about it, and that’s what I think most people love about it.”
