what happened to leather

i bought basketball shoes last week. it was my first purchase of shoes for a specific sport since my tennis shoe purchase during the summer of '06. as a great fan of chauncey billups and with little direction about what i wanted, except a desire to stay at or below one hundred dollars, i bought mr. billups' signature series adidas shoes. what surprised me was that the shoes were made out of plastic. now, i am no expert on the current selection of basketball shoes, but during my short search for a pair i noticed a sad lack of leather. i thought that shoes should be made out of leather, at least shoes that aren't "breathable" or made out of something else for a better reason. but plastic that looks like leather? i thought that was for, well, cheaper shoes. i remember that basketball shoes used to be made of leather, but maybe i just didn't know any better. it was the mid 90s that i was buying basketball shoes and i think i cared more about who was wearing the shoes than what they were made of. i guess the only change now is that i care about who is wearing them, but i also want them made out of leather.
but nevertheless, i paid a hundred dollars for a pair of shoes that were made out of plastic. i'm thinking of returning them after i used them today and got a blister. but then again, i guess if all star 3 time champion chauncey wears them, they should work for me. i wonder if adidas makes his out of leather, and then sells the rest of us plastic.