I don't know about the shoes, but I started playing NBA 2k12 the other day... "My Player" mode was actually kind of frustrating. The players start out too crappy (61-63 overall rating) and it's a tedious, annoying and boring stretch of time where you have to just run around being a role playing scrub. It just wasn't very fun to me. I found a cheat and increased his ratings significantly. I was getting annoyed with it. On top of that, the amount of time it takes you to go into a game (where you only play a handful of minutes)... the load screen, the half time, the breaks between quarters... it doesn't "skip" quickly enough. A lot of time waiting to do a whole lot of nothing. I didn't have the patience for it. A lot more fun now that my player can actually compete.
I'm sure if you're an elite gamer, you probably find it perfectly easy to play that mode. But as a casual player... I didn't see the appeal of playing a dozen games with a scrub.