strong

 Sole Collector
fast
dynamic
The Zoom Kobe IV is equipped
with all the tools for the game’s
most thrilling player.
foreword
Table Of Contents
8 Foreword
10
Pushing
Performance
16
he Zoom Kobe IV is an exceptional shoe that was made
for an exceptional   player and created by an exceptional
team. It is a sneaker that could have never come to fruition
without the absolute top efforts of everyone involved.
From Kobe himself requesting the industry-defying low- 32
top cut, to the breakthrough material known as Flywire,
to Nike legend Eric Avar’s sleek and modern design, the
Zoom Kobe IV represents the best of the best.
40
Of course, none of this would be possible, though, without
Kobe, who has pushed the limits to such an amazing
extent as a player that he has inspired the footwear to
keep up the pace. It takes a special athlete to be able to
communicate so accurately why something works for him, 44
and why something doesn’t. Kobe is just such an athlete,
and he uses this innate ability to inspire everyone around
him. The result of this has come in the form of many of
the best performing shoes in recent memory. He not only
plays with an intensity rarely seen in professional sports, he
approaches his footwear design with the same passion and 50
knowledge that he displays on court.
Kobe has also set a new standard in terms of becoming
an international star. His popularity, particularly in Asia, is 62
something that is greater than anything seen before in an
NBA player. In the following pages, you’ll read more about
how Kobe offers a truly unique insight into his needs as a
player, and thanks to him, the Nike team has been given a
helping hand in taking their footwear to the next level.
—Zac Dubasik 64
10 Zoom Kobe IV
greatness
It has been quite a journey for Kobe since he first entered
the NBA straight out of high school. Along with the many
awards, accomplishments and records, he has also earned the
respect of some of the sneaker industry’s top names as not
only an amazing player, but a player who has helped push the
performance of today’s top kicks.
Retrospective
Since signing with Nike in 2003, Kobe has played in, inspired
and helped design some of the most high-performance kicks
in recent memory. Take a look back through the history of his
Nike line.
a conversation with Kobe
Kobe dissects his latest kicks, looks back on his entire line, and
reminisces about his Olympic Gold in this in-depth interview.
How low can you go?
In the history of basketball, hi-tops have been the standard in
footwear. But the Zoom Kobe IV is looking to break that trend.
What do the studies say?
Fly wire technology
In terms of lightweight support, Flywire has been an industry
changer. This performance breakthrough didn’t happen
overnight, though. Read the story of its over seven-year
journey.
zoom kobe iv Sneakerphile
From the materials, to the cut, to the inspirations, here is the
full breakdown of the Zoom Kobe IV, straight from the source.
Collector: gou yu
Guo Yu has compiled a collection of Kobe memorabilia that
could humble even the most die-hard L.A. fans – and he has
done so all the way from China. Find out how he got started
and where he received his favorite pair.
Mentu
Kobe Bryant leads China’s finest up-and-coming players in their
pursuit of basketball greatness. He also lends his heard to a
player in need.
Zoom Kobe IV 11
greatness

The Responsibilit y of
Words by Zac Dubasik

ome athletes are born great. Some have to

push themselves through years of training and
dedication to their sport to achieve greatness.
Kobe Bryant is not an example of just one of
those types of athletes, but both. By choosing to
push his natural talent to even greater heights
by putting in the long hours and hard work to
improve, he has managed to improve upon his
already stellar skills. Throughout his already
tremendous career, he has shown a passion, skill
and knowledge that has rarely been seen. And
the incredible thing is that he is still in his prime.

Bryant began his NBA career as few have, going

straight from high school to the League. After
excelling academically and achieving nationwide
recognition for his basketball skills while
attending Philadelphia’s Lower Merion High
School, Kobe was selected 13th in the 1996 Draft
by the Charlotte Hornets (the team now resides
in New Orleans). The Hornets didn’t play into
Kobe’s plans, however, and less than a week later,
his draft rights were traded to the team he still
calls his own: the Los Angeles Lakers.
AFP / Getty Images

12 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 13

greatness
the people, he’s out and about. You can see him
shopping, or wherever.” Because he manages
Kobe’s business relations with Nike, Harrison
has had the opportunity to travel him to Asia.
He adds that, “when he does a clinic, he’s giving
a lot of himself. He’s kind of making himself
vulnerable. I think they really appreciate that. He
approaches it just like he does basketball.” Archie
McEachern has also spent years working with
Kobe, beginning with product in Nike Basketball,
and now serving as General Manager of Asia-
Pacific Basketball. “Kobe Bryant has become an
icon at the highest level of proportion,” he begins
“He is a world champion, he’s an MVP, he’s a great
individual and he’s also a great teammate. He’s
respectful; he’s had great engagement with the
Chinese consumer.”
With his presence in Asia at an all-time high, the
Olympics couldn’t have come at a more ideal
time for Kobe. The eyes of the entire planet
were focused intensely on China for the Beijing
Games, and one of the biggest features of those
ovations of the entire Games. It was the first-ever
Olympic Games that Kobe had played in, and
the urgency and intensity he played with made it
apparent how important the Games were to him.
He also endeared himself to the fans by displaying
that as one of the best offensive players in the
game, he had the work ethic to take his defensive
to the next level as well.
Even during the off-time between games, he
still managed to deliver quite a performance.
Harrison tells a story of when he and Kobe tried
to catch the second half of a women’s basketball
game. Many of the other USA basketball players
were already in attendance, and during the
halftime of the game, these players had the
attention of the fans. “So, all the fans are down
there trying to get to LeBron and Chris Paul,”
he begins. The bus they were riding could not
make it to the correct entrance, so the two were
then forced to enter through the arena’s main
entrance. “Kobe said he never had walked in the
front doors of an arena since his rookie year,”
kind of inside into the little inner ring, and all of a
sudden you hear people just like buzzing. So, he
tucks his necklace in, gets underneath my right
arm, and we shoot through the crowd and get to
where the little roped-off section where all the
rest of the NBA guys are, and the fans just start
chanting, “Kobe, Kobe, Kobe.” And they almost
forgot about what they were doing with LeBron
and those guys before. It was surreal.”
Following this Olympic appearance, U.S. fans
seem to have taken notice of his massive
international popularity. Kobe’s visibility and
recognition appear to be at-all time highs back
home as well. Taking back the Gold was an
honor for Kobe. “When that moment finally
came, and we’re all together [at] that podium
standing in front of the crowd, and you look out
there and see all these USA fans waving flags,
with tears in their eyes, and their hands over
their heart, there’s no moment that can ever
top that,” he said.

AFP / Getty Images

Kobe wasted no time exciting the fans by winning
the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in his rookie season.
By his third season, after firmly establishing
himself as an important part of the team and
playing an increasing number of minutes, he was
added to the Lakers’ starting lineup. Just a year
later, in 1999, the legendary coach Phil Jackson
took over coaching duties for the Lakers. With
the pieces of Bryant and Jackson, along with
Shaquille O’Neal in place, the Lakers went on to
win three consecutive titles in 2000, 2001 and
2002, cementing their place as one of the NBA’s
greatest legacies.
In the season immediately following that
championship run, Bryant put together one of
the most amazing individual achievements the
NBA has ever seen. While averaging over 30
points for the season, Kobe strung together nine
consecutive games where he scored at least 40
points. He was also named to both the All-NBA
and All-Defensive First Teams, posting career
highs in steals, rebounds and assists that season.
Of all of Kobe’s individual accomplishments,
though, the one that truly stands out – perhaps
He has also built up an exceptional library of
signature shoes after signing with Nike in 2003.
From the now-classic Huarache 2K4, to the shoe
he wore for the 81-point game – the Zoom Kobe
1 – to this year’s daring low-cut Zoom Kobe IV,
his sneakers have offered some of the highest
levels of performance and technology ever seen
from Nike.
With those three World Championships, an NBA
MVP award, a successful sneaker line, and now
an Olympic Gold Medal, Kobe Bryant seems to
have all the makings of a basketball legend. His
accolades and accomplishments put him right
up there with all of the greats, like MJ, Magic
and Bird. But there is one thing he has that
they didn’t – the world. Kobe’s appeal on the
international level, and even more specifically
in Asia, is something that hasn’t previously been
seen in a basketball player. That’s not to say
that the aforementioned hall-of-famers weren’t
international stars, but never has an NBA player
permeated the Pacific like Kobe.
The game of basketball is going through a
games was Kobe Bryant and the USA Basketball Harrison laughs. “So, we walk in, and as soon Kobe’s Gold Medal, along with each and every
team. And for those that didn’t previously know as we do, I’m like, ‘Hey, Kobe walk fast.’ It’s just one of his countless accomplishments, didn’t
the love he felt in China, it became obvious me and him – there’s no security, no nothing,” happed by accident. According to Harrison, Kobe
the moment he appeared at the Opening he continues. “All of sudden you start hearing “always says having natural, God-given talent is
Ceremonies, entering to one of the loudest the buzz going. And we walk in, and then we go responsibility. So, it’s his responsibility to make
is taking on the same significance and cultural
importance it had in the U.S. in the late ’80s and
’90s. This passion for hoops has been building up
for years, and thanks to the Bejing Games, it has
become apparent to the world. This has only
been aided by Bryant’s presence. His diverse, yet
smooth style of play, mixed with his leadership
and killer instinct, topped off with his history of
accomplishment on both the personal and team
levels have endeared him to the fans. According
to Kris Aman, VP/GM of Athletic Training at
Nike, who previously spent many years working
in Nike Basketball, Kobe is an athlete “that
represents the best in individual skills, that
represents the ultimate professionalism when he
goes to a foreign market.” But he does more than
just respect the culture and people. According
to Aman, “He is there to be a teacher.” Kobe
has now been traveling to Asia for several years,
teaching and sharing the game with communities
just waiting to soak up his knowledge and
experience. He has responded with an equally
open mind to learn, too.
Nico Harrison, Nike’s U.S. Pro Basketball
Image courtesy of Nike

even over his 2008 MVP award – is the 2006
game in which he single-handedly scored 81
points. It was the second highest single-game
point total in NBA history, behind only the 100
points scored by Wilt Chamberlain in 1962.
period of rapid growth in Asia, fueled by the
Chinese market – and at the center of that
basketball world is the popularity of Kobe
Bryant. Characterized by a strong, aggressive
and athletic style of play, basketball in China
Director, has known Kobe since he first signed
with the brand, and says that when Kobe
travels to the region “he doesn’t just go do an
appearance and leave. He’s really ingrained in
the culture. He’ll go eat the food, he gets with

14 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 15

greatness
sure he gets the best out of it and not just rest
on his laurels – and not just be good, but be the
best. So, that’s what motivates him to work out
as hard as he does.” That passion and intensity
even inspire those around Kobe. “He pushes
you to bring out your best,” begins McEachern.
“He does that as a basketball player, he does
that as a team leader, and he does that working
with brands – and specifically with us. He really
pushed us to deliver innovation at the highest
level we can.” From his body to his mind, Kobe
works tirelessly to gain each and every advantage
he sees an opening for, however big or small it
may be. He approaches both his training and
even his footwear with the same passion he
displays when he plays the game. “He has that
intensity,” says Aman. “He respects the game at
that level of intensity, and he also respects the
sneaker game at that level of intensity. He’s not
afraid to call people out, and he’s not afraid to
get called out. That’s just one of the reasons that
I respect him at such a high level – because he’s
not just telling, he’s listening. And to me, that’s
always a sign of the great ones who are able to
do that.”
Kobe’s desire for greatness, mixed with his
finely tuned sense of his own body’s needs,
have made him an athlete unlike any Nike has
ever developed shoes for. His insights have
allowed Nike’s team to go deeper and deeper
16 Zoom Kobe IV
into projects than they had previously imagined.
“Most basketball players aren’t that cerebral when
it comes to insights into a shoe and what he
wants. It’s definitely a different level. He’s very
specific,” notes Harrison. When teamed with
a designer who has an equally elevated level of
insight, the product can be pushed that much
higher. “The relationship between Eric Avar and
him is really a synergy that’s hard to duplicate,”
beings McEachern. “You have individuals – Eric
on the design side and Kobe on the basketball
side – that are the best at what they do. And
they are all about pushing the needle to seek the
ultimate performance and how do you continue
to get better.” The team of Kobe and Avar
has embraced the process, and some industry-
changing footwear has been the result. “He has
unconventional ways of looking at things that
force you to solve the problem differently,” says
Aman. The development of the Zoom Kobe IV
as a low-top serves as a perfect example of how
Kobe’s confidence as a player, knowledge of his
own body, and fearlessness allowed them to try
something so drastic. And that small advantage
Kobe felt he could gain in speed and quickness by
having a lower cut provided more than enough
reasoning to go through with the project.
Kobe even stays connected at the level of keeping
up to date with which colorways release next,
where they will be available and how many
NBAE / Getty Images
pairs are made. McEachern sees Kobe’s insights
changing “how we’re now creating footwear and
how we are connecting with consumers,” he
begins. “He has kinda pushed us back to product
excellence as the lead, and he’s pushed us back
to seeking the ultimate solutions for the game.”
This influence of the entire direction of basketball
footwear couldn’t have come at a better time.
The sleek, low-profile, and well-cushioned
designs are not only what Kobe wants, but also
the style preferred by the emerging Asian market,
which is led by China.
With a renewed energy surrounding the
NBA this season, largely thanks to an exciting
rookie class and continued excitement from
the Summer Games, Kobe has lead the Lakers
to an exceptional start. His influence in the
U.S. and Asia is becoming evident in not only
his star power on court, but with the way he is
influencing the culture of basketball. Harrison has
seen an important transition in China especially.
“They’ve grabbed onto the culture of basketball,
which takes it to another level. It takes it beyond
just the courts, but outside the courts.” As a
player, as a worldwide ambassador to the sport
Image courtesy of Nike
and as an influence in the sneaker world, Kobe
has taken on the role as a leader – doing this with
intensity, and acting as if it were his responsibility
to do so.
Zoom Kobe IV 17
retrospective
In Retrospect
The History of Kobe’s Kicks
ust after the turn of the millennium, there
was quite a bit of uncertainty about Nike’s stable
of basketball athletes. Michael Jordan had just
retired after an illustrious career, only to return
and briefly play for the Washington Wizards
for just two seasons. Surely, that didn’t mean
much in terms of having a long-term face of the
brand that would carry the brand deep into the
future. At the time, Kevin Garnett was no longer
a Nike athlete, LeBron James wasn’t yet signed
to his monstrous endorsement deal, and there
was still a void in the realm of superstar athletes
as Tim Duncan’s personality didn’t quite excite
consumers, and the youthful skill of Gary Payton
seemed to be diminishing. Vince Carter may
have been leap-frogging actual humans while
dunking, but there still wasn’t a proven franchise
athlete that the brand could depend on. Luckily
for Nike, Kobe Bryant was a sneaker-free agent
of sorts, and the brand was looking at the three-
time champion as a vehicle for not only the
future of Nike Basketball, but also the future of
performance footwear and innovation.
It was around that same time that Nike had just
opened its Innovation Kitchen, an advanced
timeline sector of the company’s headquarters
where designers and developers would be given
the space to work years ahead on projects
of the future, toying with everything from
new materials to new cushioning systems and
anything that could potentially revolutionize or
improve their current athletic categories. Just
before Kobe Bryant was officially signed to the
brand, current Nike CEO Mark Parker called
upon accomplished designer Eric Avar, who had
previously had great success with the signatures
lines of Penny Hardaway, Gary Payton and
Jason Kidd. “I had just transitioned from in-line
18 Zoom Kobe IV
Words by Nick DePaula
Photographu by Steve Mullholand
basketball down to the Kitchen, and actually, I
was looking forward to having a break from
basketball,” admits Avar. “I was looking forward
to working on running, cross training and other
things. I was there for all of two months and Mark
Parker called, and he said, ‘Hey, we’re thinking of
signing Kobe, and we would like you to work on
his product.’”
The return to working on basketball product
would be different for Avar this time around as
compared to the decade he had spent within
Nike Basketball, as he would now be working
out of the Innovation Kitchen and be given more
resources, more room to try new things and
more freedom to attack high performance with
no restraints. He would also be working with
Kobe Bryant on creating a series of signature
sneakers that could speak to his sleek style of
play and his unyielding demand for excellence.
“From there, Mark, myself and Tinker [Hatfield]
went down to L.A. and met with Kobe for the
first time,” Avar reflects. “We sat across the
table, and I went in with an open mind, and
right from the start I could just tell that he was
so passionate about basketball, but [also] about
product and design as well. He literally blew
me away within the first two minutes of talking
with him. I had worked with a lot of athletes
prior to that, but it was just an eye-opening
experience for me, and I was amazed at how
intelligent, articulate and passionate he was
about every aspect of the game, product, design,
performance and aesthetics. Right from that
moment I was super excited to be working with
Kobe.” After that initial meeting, the tone had
been set, and the duo was ready to tackle the
performance basketball industry head-on.
Zoom Kobe IV 19
retrospective
air Flight Huarache
While the Zoom Huarache 2K4 might be the first
Nike shoe you recall Kobe Bryant regularly wearing,
the Flight Huarache was actually what he rocked
during the beginning on the 2003-2004 NBA season
in player exclusive Lakers colors. Just before he
debuted the Huarache 2K4, Bryant paid homage
to the ancestry of the line, which began a decade
prior with enhanced fit and targeted support in
mind. The shoe featured quite a few overlays, but it
was also very minimal along the collar, allowing for
a conforming fit unique to each wearer. Legendary
designer Tinker Hatfield reflects about how the
entire Huarache series almost never was …
So the Huarache concept came out of a singular
experience I had. This doesn’t always happen this
way. But I was water-skiing one day, and I was
sitting in the water slalom skiing. Both feet were
actually in these neoprene booties, and you’re
strapped in. So I’m getting ready to get pulled out
of the water, and I got yanked up and either the
boat wasn’t going fast enough or I wasn’t doing
something right, but I crashed. So I’m sitting
there, waiting to get pulled up again, and I’m
looking down, and I’m just kind of waiting, and I’m
looking at how these neoprene booties sort of fit
nicely around [my feet]. They just sort of conform
around anybody’s ankle. The neoprene bootie
in a water ski fits a bunch of different people, so
I’m thinking, “That’s kind of cool,” and then …
whup! [laughs] In the middle of that thought, all of
a sudden I’m skiing again. [laughs]. So afterwards,
I skied on, and then I got out of the water, and I
was just looking at the booties, and I’m just going,
“That’s one of the problems we have with shoes,
they don’t really conform to different shapes of
feet very well,” and I said, “Neoprene does that.”
I went back to my studio a couple days later and
started sketching up neoprene-based shoes. A
lot of people think that Huarache comes from
the Sock Racer, but it doesn’t come from the
20 Zoom Kobe IV
Sock Racer at all. The Sock Racer was stretchy
[in the forefoot], and I’m going, “That’s not really
where you want stretch.” You want stretch
to be [along the collar] where your feet are all
different shapes. You want it to fit better [at the
collar], that’s where shoes should fit better, right
there. So I started sketching up booties and then
realized that it needed, for support, some sort of
exoskeleton, because I thought it would be cool
to be seen. So the whole exoskeletal approach
to the shoe design sort of came out of this sort
of desire to want to develop this Dynamic Fit
shoe. In some ways I guess you could say it has
an internal bootie. It’s not really internal; you see
most of it in this or in the original running shoe.
I started drawing this exoskeleton over it, and
I took it into Sandy Bodecker’s office, this first
sketch, and it’s in archives. We actually have it.
The first sketch sort of showed this neoprene
idea with this exoskeleton over it and Sandy, he
thought it was really cool, and in a red pen he just
wrote, “Sneaker of the Gods.” Like it looked like
something that Zeus would wear, like a sandal,
kind of like a sandal. I was not thinking sandal or
Huarache or anything at the time, it was Sandy
who wrote “Sneaker of the Gods” and [he was]
kind of thinking, “Yeah, this is what Zeus would
wear or Mercury or somebody.” So I came back,
I’m going, “It’s sort of like a sandal.” And then
I’m going, “I don’t want to call it a foot sandal or
a something.” So a lot of us had been to Mexico,
and I’m thinking, “Instead of calling it a sandal, I’ll
call it a Huarache.”
So that’s how the whole thing got started. The
idea was interesting in that it focused on the fit
of the shoe around your ankle and your heel and
your instep rather than sort of being stretchy and
conforming up in the toes. Sock Racers always
make my toes go numb, so the last thing I wanted
to do was create another one of those, because
the stretchiness was pulling on my toenails,
and it just made my toes feel funny. This was a
minimalist concept of what we called conforming,
or in our case, we called it Dynamic Fit with
the exoskeletal support system. We didn’t need
a heel counter, and then we combined it with
this sort of cupping. As I was finishing up the
running shoe, which, by the way, was developed
by Michael Donohue, and Sandy Bodecker got
involved, and Mike Quinn got involved … some
of our very best people today were some of our
very best people way back, in a different role.
Quickly we realized that this had more legs
than just being in a running shoe. So, I thought,
“Well, I’ll just sort of take this same idea, and
transfer it into both a cross training shoe and
a basketball shoe.” Kind of the big three at the
time: running, cross training and basketball. I did
this sketch [for cross training] that pretty much
mimicked the running shoe. It was very similar,
but with an extra strap for the upper to go up
higher in a hi-top silhouette and then a deeper,
bigger midsole cradle and then, of course, the
rubber was different than we would have on our
running shoe.
So my recollection is that I had this sketch,
the original sketch of the basketball shoe, and
I handed that off to Eric Avar. And he was still
pretty young at the time, so it was just sort of
given to him to finish it all off. So he finished his
design, put in some of the other little details, and
he did the outsole, too. I didn’t do that particular
outsole. He took it to its conclusion and that was
because I was busy working on the cross trainer.
He was doing this one, and the running shoe was
kind of just up and rolling. So that’s really how it
got sort of birthed. The running shoe, by the way,
it didn’t book at all, the original Huarache shoe, it
did not book.
It was going die. Only 50 pairs were booked by
maybe only one store. I remember Tom Parks
saying, “You know, it’s just a niche product, [we]
probably shouldn’t even make it.” Tom Archie
believed in that running shoe so much that he
ordered 5,000 pairs, and he didn’t even have the
authority to. He was the PLM for running, and
he ordered 5,000 pairs without bookings, which
Nike, at least then, never would have done. He
just did it anyway, which is awesome. That was
so cool. Then he was kind of in a sense on the
hook for these 5,000 pairs. [laughs] He took
them to the New York Marathon, put them in our
booth at the New York Marathon, and started
selling them. He sold them all, and people were
putting them on, and it was one of those rare
products that looked different, but when you put
it on it also felt different and felt different for the
better because it sort of fit in a new and more
conforming way, and going back to the water
ski analogy, it sort of just conformed to your
particular shape, and it was interesting. Now
there’re 5,000 pairs out there, and the orders
just start rolling in. And then the rest is history
for that running shoe that, I think, at the end of
that first year had sold 250,000 pairs. So, we
were probably a little more able then to change
and ramp up production than we are today just
because of the way factories were a little looser.
So they were able to ramp up production and
get more shoes into the marketplace, and then
the design stayed around. They kept it for the
following year or two maybe. In the meantime,
what was cool about the basketball shoe was
that the Fab 5 at the University of Michigan were
given these shoes, and they all wore them. They
thought they were great. This shoe developed
a life of its own partly because there was no
basketball shoe that ever looked like that before
it, and these guys all at the University of Michigan
were all wearing them. Again, it was an explosion
after that. That’s how I remember the story. …
Zoom Kobe IV 21
retrospective
air Zoom Huarache
With Kobe Bryant now part of the Nike
Basketball family, Eric Avar and the team of
developers he was working with in the Innovation
Kitchen aimed to provide him with a more
modern piece of performance footwear rooted
in light weight, support and minimalism. “It
wasn’t a pure Flight shoe, it wasn’t a Force shoe
and it wasn’t an Uptempo shoe; it was just a
shoe unto itself,” explains Avar. It drafted back to
Tinker Hatfield’s original Flight Huarache, as the
2K4 would incorporate a similar ankle area cut-
away, but it also took on a more streamlined and
simplistic aesthetic based on the needs of Bryant.
“He’s an extremely dynamic and versatile player,”
says Avar. “He can be extremely quick, but at
the same time he can be extremely explosive
and powerful. Early on, we just figured that his
product had to be versatile, and it really had to
cover off all ends of the spectrum. It had to be
the best of everything, like Kobe’s style and his
game. That was the thinking with the 2K4.”
From there, Avar designed the shoe to
incorporate a collection of proven components
that would help in the goal of making the shoe a
dominant performer. The upper was comprised
of a simple leather base with a toe cap for
reinforcement, and the heel was locked in place
with the help of a TPU external counter. A
breathable, perforated Neoprene tongue lined
the shoe, and the strap along the collar added an
extra sense of security and fit. “We used Zoom
Air, kept the midsole heights low to the ground
and used a simple, almost one-piece upper,”
notes Avar. “It was very lightweight, very minimal
and just what you need.” While the Zoom
Huarache 2K4 became a staple shoe on the feet
of nearly all of Nike’s collegiate- and professional-
22 Zoom Kobe IV
level athletes, it was quite a departure for the
brand, as during recent years before it, they
often relied on more visible cushioning elements
in their flagship and most featured models.
It was for good reason that the brand shifted
away from previous cushioning systems like Shox
or Tubular Air, as the hope with the 2K4 was
that its simple nature and no-frills approach to
performance would lead to its overall playability
being the focal point of the shoe and not a
specific technology, gimmick or seasonal theme.
“The 2K4 was designed around the best of all
worlds,” says Avar. “At the time, there was a lot
of visible technology going on, and we envisioned
this being much more [of] a simple, modern
product grounded in classic elements. At the
time, some of the classic elements of basketball
shoes were getting lost.” Right from the start,
the 2K4 was a huge success, as its classic lines
translated well for team product at the college
level, and yet the more flashy and personalized
Lakers colorways Kobe Bryant was wearing at
the time took on a buzz of their own.
The 2K4 served to be an excellent starting point
for Kobe Bryant’s footwear coming from Nike,
as it would lay the foundation for the contoured
fit, responsive cushioning, lateral stability and
attention to detail that Bryant’s line would later
become known for. “He said that the 2K4 was
one of the first shoes that he felt like was an
extension of him,” Avar reveals. “That Nike had
captured the essence of his performance style.
That’s manifested itself in some of his other
product that we’ve done and certainly in some of
the future product that we’re working on.”
Zoom Kobe IV 23
retrospective
air Zoom Huarache
After the tremendous success that the Zoom
Huarache 2K4 experienced just a year prior, Nike
Basketball now had a market of fans eagerly
awaiting the next iteration of the Huarache
line. They were rightfully expecting the same
top-notch performance attributes, and the next
evolution of the line wouldn’t disappoint, as the
Eric Avar-designed Huarache 2K5 featured a
similar collar strap for protection and once again
incorporated the highly responsive Zoom Air for
cushioning. “We felt like we had something good
going with the 2K4, and Tinker [Hatfield] always
says, ‘Every third Jordan or so, you really change
things up from a performance and construction
standpoint and from a visual standpoint,’” says
Avar. “The 2K5 was coming very much on the
heels of the 2K4, and we felt like we had a good
thing going. And we didn’t want to reinvent the
wheel too much with this one.”
Rather than entirely re-craft the look of the
Huarache 2K4 that people seemed to be
falling in love with, Avar looked instead to the
performance attributes of the shoe that could
use some improvement. “We were wondering,
though, ‘Could we make it a little lighter, could
we make it a little more dynamic?’” recalls Avar.
“We were working with Free at the time, so we
wondered if we could make it more flexible and
make it have a little more responsive toe-off.”
Avar, who also designed the original Nike Free
5.0, sure enough decided to incorporate what
he learned from that running shoe and several
of its Free principles into the 2K5, as he carved
out weight along the midsole and added in
segmented flex grooves for increased flexibility.
Along the heel, the crash pad and point of contact
24 Zoom Kobe IV
was also more radiused for a more natural
landing and improved heel-to-toe transition. But,
the biggest shift from the 2K4 to the 2K5 was
certainly the newly segmented flex grooves along
the forefoot’s midsole and the more pronounced
outrigger, which provided some stellar lateral
stability.
While the Zoom Huarache 2K5 was once again a
team shoe worn at the collegiate and professional
levels, Kobe Bryant was a headlining act for the
shoe, and he could often be seen wearing it in a
mean Black/Canyon Gold colorway and various
other Lakers-related styles. The Huarache 2K5
was also the shoe that debuted his Sheath logo,
as three colorways that released in the summer
of 2005 incorporated his logo just above the
external counter along the heel. While the shoe
featured several trusty performance attributes,
it also included the use of laser etching, as the
toe and tongue featured hits of leather removed
with the help of a laser machine for an added
graphic element. The 2K5 wasn’t as revolutionary
as some of the sneakers to come in the Zoom
Kobe line, nor was it as iconic and simplistic as
the Zoom Huarache 2K4, but it did do a great
job of foreshadowing the role that Nike’s Free
ideology would have in Kobe Bryant’s sneakers
in the coming years. It also began the evolution
of the outrigger within the line, which seemingly
becomes more pronounced every year in order
to support the lateral needs of the ever-active
and explosive Bryant. More than anything else,
it continued to build from the stellar on-court
performance that brought the 2K4 such adoration,
and it offered up several added benefits – like
increased flexibility – along the way.
Zoom Kobe IV 25
retrospective
Zoom kobe
After spending two seasons wearing both the
Huarache 2K4 and 2K5 in several player exclusive
colorways, the time came for Kobe Bryant
to receive his very own signature shoe, and
immediately there were several key components
that had to be incorporated into his first sneaker.
With designer Eric Avar away on medical leave,
Nike Basketball Design Director Ken Link
stepped in and crafted the Zoom Kobe I, which
proved to be full of things he learned from his
previous shoes and also full of personal touches
and core attributes specific to Kobe’s needs. “I
think the best thing about Kobe is when he looks
at a shoe, he wants to see himself and his game
in his shoe,” says Link. “I think that’s one of
the things about Kobe is that he gives so much
information that it truly drives the process.”
The shoe began as a modern approach to offering
lateral support and stability in a cushioned ride,
and right away, there was a move away from the
strap that had become so recognizable on both
the 2K4 and 2K5 before it. “He said he didn’t
want one,” reveals Link. “We wanted to focus
on the collar, and you’ll start to see it in other
shoes [later in his line], because a lot of times he
was already thinking about, ‘Could I get to a low?’
Getting to a low is not necessarily the easiest
thing to do, but he felt like his game and where
he was headed was getting to that low thought
process.” It would be another three shoes
before Bryant truly got into that low-cut height,
but the Zoom Kobe I serves as a great opening
to his signature series and included several
performance merits.
The heel and forefoot Zoom Air was carried over
from the 2K series for outstanding cushioning, and
at Kobe’s request, the shoe was more padded
and cushioned at the expense of some weight.
He was willing to sacrifice a few ounces in the
shoe because he was just coming off of a summer
26 Zoom Kobe IV
of grueling two-a-day workouts and weighed in
higher than he had any other season before at a
chiseled 225 pounds. While the shoe may have
clocked in at a slightly higher weight than his other
shoes, it still included attributes of protection and
support that his line has become known for, with
the pronounced lateral outrigger providing the
shoe with a stable base. Along the heel, a molded
TPU wrap served as a chassis for the foot, helping
Bryant as he quickly changed directions during
games. “The back heel wrap was based more
around [the thought] that you lock the heel in, and
you’re cool,” says Link. “That has everything to do
with the control of the foot.”
For Bryant, the shoe was everything he needed
at the time, offering a great multi-directional
traction pattern, reliable support and the
cushioned ride he demanded. The various
colorways offered up were also extremely
personal and specific to Bryant, like the Retro
Nights version in the colors of the MPLS Lakers
that paid tribute to retired former Lakers greats,
as well as the Black/Varsity Maize colorway that
was inspired by the movie Kill Bill and Kobe’s
ability to be an assassin with the ball. It’s also
a shoe that holds a special place in the hearts
of both Kobe and Link, as he was wearing the
White/Black/Varsity Purple on January 22, 2006
when he exploded for 81 points against the
Toronto Raptors. It was one of those moments
in Link’s life where he could recall exactly where
he was and what he was doing. “I was in Taiwan
watching the game, and it was like, ‘He’s out of
control.’ I’m thinking, ‘He could go for 100,’” Link
says. “I remember it being big – it was in the
paper the next day. I remember just thinking like,
‘Wow, when he wants to, no one can stop him.’”
While some people thought afterwards that the
Raptors simply didn’t bother to show up and
gave Kobe free reign on scoring, Link remembers
quite a different scene taking place as Bryant
earned every last basket. “If you go back to those
highlights, there were a lot of cats in his face,
leaping, surprised as they can’t try and stop the
shot. It was not old lady defense,” he jokes.
Once the season concluded, Kobe had a full
summer of workouts ahead of him and he began
to reduce his weight and frame, getting to a
more nimble playing style, but once again, he
had the foresight to call out his specific needs in
the Zoom Kobe I, that would most benefit his
game at that time. “Kobe, he’s so far along the
spectrum of what he expects out of a shoe and
what he wants to put into it, and so he’s been
there every step of the way,” says Link. It made
things easy on Link, who had an articulate and
decisive subject to work with and a set list of
needs to infuse into Bryant’s first sneaker. “He
really is ahead of his time, the way that he thinks
about his game, the way he thinks about training
for his game, the way he thinks about how his
game interacts with the rest of his world and the
world around it – he really gets that on a level
that most people don’t get.”
Zoom Kobe IV 27
retrospective
Zoom kobe
As Ken Link and Kobe Bryant paired up once
again to work on his second signature sneaker,
the Zoom Kobe II, they looked to innovate on
many new fronts and take Bryant’s footwear to
new levels of court feel and construction. Kobe
had lost some weight and bulk from previous
year, and now he was looking to take advantage
of his explosive first step and slashing style of
play. Rather than build directly from the Zoom
Kobe I and its more sturdy construction, Link
looked to Bryant’s favorite weapon of choice
for his more stealth frame: the Huarache 2K4.
“If you take the 2K4, a great shoe, how can you
make it more flexible, less layers, lighter, lower
to the ground and provide better cushioning?”
questioned Link. “Could you really change one
of the best playing shoes we’ve done? And could
you take it to the next level for Kobe?” Surely
those were the type of questions Link was hired
to solve, so he set out to find the solutions for
Kobe’s current set of needs.
In order to make a shoe that sat lower to the
ground and offered greater flexibility, Link
and his crew of developers at Nike decided to
incorporate the methodologies of both Nike Free
and Nike Considered, which at first appeared
to be a daunting task. Almost immediately, it
was decided that this new approach to the shoe
would fundamentally change the way it would be
constructed, and for the first time in basketball a
shoe was made with reduced waste, and without
toxic chemicals or bonds, as the Zoom Kobe II
was instead fully stitched throughout. The upper
was comprised of a series of panels that worked
to provide flexibility and targeted support, albeit
in a single-layer construction. “The single-layer
Considered upper was a way to get to a lighter,
better system,” says Link. Rather than develop
the shoe with a traditional midsole in mind, the
shoe’s outsole featured a sidewall that crept up
along the perimeter of the shoe, serving as a
28 Zoom Kobe IV
footbucket to provide the athlete with lateral
support and protection.
The shoe was also crafted differently in that the
heel and forefoot Zoom Air cushioning units
were embedded within the insole, which helped
in ridding the shoe of its traditional midsole
and allowed for it to sit just millimeters off of
the ground. The outsole was then created with
Nike’s Free principles in mind, as it incorporated
a series of liner and lateral flex grooves for
amazing flexibility never before seen in hoops
footwear. The Zoom Kobe II became a new
way to make a shoe. Unlike previous shoes that
included the upper, the midsole and then the
outsole, the Kobe II’s upper was stitched directly
to the shoe’s footbucket, so it was the insole
within providing all of the shoe’s cushioning. The
result was a shoe that was lighter, lower and
offered greater control of Bryant’s movements
when planting and changing directions. “Kobe has
an incredible first step, and we asked, ‘How do
we get that separation [from his defenders] for
him?’” Link recalls. “We feel that Free could give
him great court-feel, and it’s going to give him
that quick first step, and really let him feel the
court and move with it.”
Once again, it was the insights from Kobe
Bryant through a series of discussions and
meetings that helped Link and Nike Basketball
create the Zoom Kobe II. Link feels that Kobe is
able to provide those bits of inspiration simply
because he thinks the game through differently
than any other athlete, for basketball is truly
his relentless passion. “Vincent Van Gogh was
asked, ‘Do you love what you do?’ He said, ‘No,
I obsess it.’ I think most people understand that
people that are great at what they do, they don’t
really love what they do, they obsess it. That
obsession is what we see in Kobe,” Link says. “I
don’t really know of any athlete on the court
that lives and breathes basketball like Kobe.
He’s so intelligent, he’s so into it, and at the
same time he just really loves it.”
As the Zoom Kobe line would progress beyond
the II, Bryant’s sneakers would always come
back to the notion of daring to try new things,
which can include new cushioning setups, new
methods of construction and even new heights.
“We want to think of Kobe in a test pilot type of
manner, and how can we really begin to push
the envelope with him and do some different
things,” explains Link. “Instead of incrementally
getting there, really taking a big leap as far as
function goes. The Kobe II is not a complete
departure for a Nike shoe, it’s more about how
we got there and the functionality of it, and that
when you put it on, it does have a different feel
than most basketball shoes that we’ve done.” As
Link would hand back the reigns of the Zoom
Kobe line to designer Eric Avar after the II, it
would also signal a noteworthy change in Kobe’s
line, as Avar sought to remove Bryant’s series
from the normal business sector and work on his
signature line from the Innovation Kitchen. Now,
the shoes were given more than the normal 14-
month window that products from the basketball
category are provided for their design and
development process. “I think the way that Eric
works now is really important for a guy like Kobe
and how important he is as a kind of test pilot for
Nike,” Link says. “It’s important to get out, to
get ahead of stuff and try new stuff. The vibe is
really amazing, and it’s all because of that time to
really work with the athlete, fine-tune the idea
and push the envelope for performance. But, Eric
recognizes that, ‘Hey, if I get out of this system, I
can really help this guy out. I can really develop a
bond and a true insight that will help the category
beyond even what it thinks it can be and show
it where it could be.’” As we’d find out in the
coming years, Link couldn’t have been more right.
Zoom Kobe IV 29
retrospective
Zoom kobe
After two great performance successes in the
first two installments of the Zoom Kobe line, the
Zoom Kobe III took on its own unique styling
approach as designer Eric Avar came back into
the fold. Avar again took Tinker’s advice of
changing things up every so often in a shoe line
to heart. This sneaker was undoubtedly unlike
any other shoe in the line, as it took on a theme
and aesthetic all its own. “He’s very, very big on
analogies and metaphors,” Avar explains about
Kobe’s approach to design. “That’s great from
a design standpoint, because it’s just so rich in
design inspiration and how you pull different
inspirations. At that time, he had talked a lot
about the black mamba snake and it being one of
the most deadly and sleekest creatures on earth
and how that related to his game.”
It was the notion about the black mamba’s lethal
abilities that immediately clicked in Avar’s mind,
as he instantly knew where he planned to take
Bryant’s third shoe. There were a few goals
he had right from the start as he attacked the
design of the shoe, namely, he wanted it to be
lightweight, incredibly stable, and very sleek and
comfortable against the foot. “We always talk
about how good design is the perfect balance
between science and art,” says Avar. “And it
starts with science, and you always have to make
sure that the product performs well.
From there, how do you bring some of the
performance to life, and how do you mix [in] the
character of the athlete … so that, as Kobe says,
the product becomes an extension of him.”
With the Zoom Kobe III, the approach was
actually fairly straightforward, as Avar and his
team of developers implemented a decidedly
protruding outrigger for unmistakable support,
as well as Nike’s reassuring Zoom Air in both the
heel and forefoot for cushioning. “The upper was
really pretty simple. It was one piece of mesh
with this injected, molded structure, and it was
30 Zoom Kobe IV
really breathable and very conforming,” notes
Avar. “Kobe says it’s one of his favorite shoes to
this day. The shoe played great, there was great
cushioning and a great responsive feel.” Unlike
the Zoom Kobe II before it, the III goes sans
strap, and it includes a simple lacing setup for
quick and easy entry along with a full Sphere
Liner for amazingly plush comfort. One thing
the shoe did carry over from Bryant’s previous
signature kicks was the diamond touches along
it – this time appearing in the forefoot’s traction
pattern, as the configuration served as an ode to
his daughter, Diamante.
The shoe became an instant hit among basketball
players for its incredibly light weight and close-
fitting comfort, though some people were
certainly initially uncertain of its at-first awkward
appearance. “We tried to bring some classic
elements into this shoe, but we also pushed the
needle with this one, and it’s kind of a love/hate
shoe definitely with athletes and consumers,”
admits Avar. “And every so often, I think that’s a
good thing to do. You push the boundaries and
have people question what footwear can be.
We created a unique product that is very much
manifested from Kobe’s unique style.”
Despite whatever initial resistance to the shoe’s
appearance there may have been, consumers
were won over either once they wore the shoe
themselves or because Kobe was having a career
season in them. It would be the shoe he wore
during his first-ever MVP Award season, and he
also wore the Zoom Kobe III while leading the
Lakers all the way to the NBA Finals. Either way,
Eric Avar has no regrets for the shoe’s daring look.
“First and foremost, it’s about performance,” he
says. “It’s about creating the best product for him,
but also for all ballers. He likes being on the cutting
edge of new technology and new style, but also
to push the dynamics of what a high-performance
basketball shoe could be.”
Zoom Kobe IV 31
retrospective
hyperdunk
Just as Eric Avar was beginning to put the final
touches on the Zoom Kobe III, he had already
begun working on the Nike Hyperdunk, a shoe
that would not only hope to clock in at the
lightest weight yet for a Nike Basketball shoe,
but that also would provide more support and
stability when compared to shoes of the past.
Once again, Avar and his team of designers and
developers tapped into Kobe Bryant and his
explosive and active style of play as they began
to build a shoe that would debut two of Nike’s
newest technologies: Lunar Foam and Flywire.
“We had presented some of the early concepts
to him in terms of what we were doing and
what we were thinking with Flywire,” explains
Avar. “Of course he was very interested and liked
the notion of new performance.” After getting
some initial feedback from Kobe and beginning
the design process, the team aimed for the shoe
to be worn on quite the global platform during
the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. “It was
never specifically meant to be Kobe’s signature
shoe, but it was designed definitely with him in
mind,” says Avar. “It starts with an athlete and a
close relationship with a designer and a couple of
innovators.”
For Nike Basketball, the Hyperdunk looked to
reintroduce some familiar ideas from previous
shoes and also go where no shoe from the
category had gone before. The shoe’s upper
was entirely new to the sport, incorporating a
large, clear panel of Nike’s Flywire construction
that proved to not only reduce weight, but
also provide great lockdown and support for
the game’s most active players. With the help
of Lunar Foam cushioning in the forefoot and
an otherwise minimally constructed upper,
the shoe was able to clock in several ounces
lighter than previous shoes in the Zoom Kobe
line, which are always considered to be the
lightest basketball shoe for every season. Once
the Summer Olympics rolled around, the shoe
was validated quite well on court, as players
of all sizes and positions relied on the sneaker
during the world’s most important basketball
tournament. From guards like Kobe Bryant to
active big men like Yi Jianlian, the Hyperdunk was
able to provide protection and containment for
32 Zoom Kobe IV
an array of players and at the same time provide
the lightweight cushioned ride that all ballers
dream of.
Even before it was widely released, the shoe
took on a life of its own thanks to one of Nike’s
most extensive viral campaigns yet. Whether
it was the creation of a fictitious Hyperdunk
Recovery Center for victims of a posterizing
dunk, or the series of viral videos that showed
Kobe Bryant jumping over anything from a
speeding Aston Martin to a pool of snakes, the
Hyperdunk was given top billing from Nike on all
fronts, and it looked to define a new era of design
and performance going forward. “We’ve talked
internally quite a bit about the Hyperdunk being
a catalyst,” reveals Avar. “We’ve been doing a
lot of great product in basketball, but I think the
market, too, is somewhat turning, and I don’t
know if it’s going to go back to the craziness
from the ’90s, but in terms of new and honest
innovations and a return to classic elements, I
definitely feel like we’re seeing that shift. The
Hyperdunk was a good catalyst to start and re-
point the arrow for where basketball and product
in general can go.”
With the Hyperdunk serving as the signal of
change in the direction of basketball shoes going
to more minimal and simplistic uppers with
protection and support where needed, Nike
had made a statement that Flywire was here
to stay. For ballers worldwide, the technology
was a welcomed change, as it’s able to reduce
the weight of a shoe without compromising its
stability. “I think we knew after we made that
one there – we were like, ‘Oh, shit, this could
be something,’” says Jay Meschter, Innovation
Director of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen. “This
is the real deal, and we were pretty confident
about that internally. To hold your tongue
for four years about something you know
that’s going to be impactful, that’s the hard
part.” After the success that the Hyperdunk
experienced on a global scale, Nike Basketball
now had a new direction for the category, as
the shoe’s lightweight and soft cushioning
properties proved to work for people of all sizes
and playing styles.
Zoom Kobe IV 33
interview
A Conversation with
hen most athletes are asked about their
sneakers, they oftentimes have only a surface
level of interest in the details surrounding their
footwear, from the way the shoe looks and is
developed to the way it fits and feels. For some,
they might not get past saying, “I just want them
to be comfortable.” And that’s OK, because after
all, it’s not their jobs to design and construct a
high-performance basketball shoe to suit their
needs. But that’s what makes Kobe Bryant so
different. He’s not like most athletes. He not only
understands on a technical level the componentry
and logic behind his footwear, but he also guides
the direction of design and innovation at Nike.
If his shoes are too high from the ground and his
court feel is being compromised, he knows it, and
he’ll make sure the necessary changes are made.
An obsessive analyst of game film and images
of his playing form, he’ll even notice if his foot is
sliding too far off of the footbed in shoes, and he’ll
push for improvements in support to help with
his reaction time.
Rarely has an athlete been so involved in the
back story of his shoes, calling out specific
34 Zoom Kobe IV
Words and Interview by Nick DePaula
Photos courtesy of Nike
inspirations and needs in his footwear as he
looks to improve not only the playability of his
shoes every year, but also his performance on
the basketball court as he seeks out an NBA
championship every season. His sneakers are
a crucial component to that quest. It was at
Kobe’s request that the Zoom Kobe IV be made
as a low-top in order to help with his range of
motion, help reduce weight and also help the
shoe become a part of him, ridding him of any
worry or distraction that might prevent him
from making that lightning-quick first step as
he splits a pair of defenders and heads right
towards the rim. He also has been closely
involved in the development of every one of his
shoes, and it’s his attention to detail and close
working relationship with Nike Designer Eric
Avar that allow the two to continue to push
the envelope of design and the boundaries of
performance. Follow along as Kobe has quite a
lot to say about how his shoes are created and
designed, how the Kobe Mentu project came
about, and how important it was to capture a
Gold Medal at this past August’s Beijing Summer
Olympic Games.
Zoom Kobe IV 35
interview
Nick DePaula: How long ago did you get
involved with the process of designing the
IV and what made you decide to go in the
direction of a low-top shoe?
Kobe Bryant: Maybe about a year and a half
ago. It was a couple of reasons. One is, I wanted
the foot to move comfortably. I felt like hi-tops
at times can be a little bit restricting of your
movement. Also, I wanted to decrease weight. I
wanted to cut the shoe [in height], make it lighter,
make it sleeker, and we were able to accomplish
both of those things.
How much of a role did your background of
growing up in Italy around soccer have on
this shoe?
It actually just came from a functional point of
view and just thinking about the game and how
I feel when I play. I just wanted to have better
range and flexibility within the ankle and be able
to move and cut and not feel like that movement
is restricted. I think how the soccer background
came into play is understanding how much stress
you put on your ankles and how hard you play
the game. In soccer, you can still wear low-tops,
and they put more stress on their ankles than we
do, but they can still wear low-tops. So I think
you need a confidence to be able to push the
boundaries a little bit.
Were you met with any resistance when you
approached them with the idea?
No, not really. They know that once I come up
with an idea, whether it was with the 2K4 or all
of the other shoes that we’ve developed, all of
the technology that we’ve put into them comes
straight from me, from a necessity and basic
need [perspective]. And Nike, they’re so true to
the athlete and what the athlete wants that I’ll
say, “Hey, this is what I need in my shoe,” and
everyone else will just jump on board.
Where there any elements or technologies
that you wanted to see incorporated in the
IV?
Well, we kind of developed a theme for my
shoes. We always want to push the boundaries
of lightness and speed. Also, we want to
minimize the reaction time in the shoe, so
when you change directions, we want to try
and minimize that so that the foot is not sliding
within the shoe and it actually reacts quicker
with the change of direction and changes of
pace. … Another thing that we wanted to
implement into the shoe is to make the shoe
a part of the foot so that it is almost one, and
they’re moving as one and the same. The
Zoom Air technology obviously is a big part of
36 Zoom Kobe IV
the reaction time, and those are some of the
core elements that we put into the shoe. [The]
Flywire Technology that you’ve seen in the
Hyperdunks as well enabled us to make the
shoe as light as it is and still be as strong as it is.
Did you notice anything different right away
once you started wearing Flywire in the
Hyperdunk?
How light they are—that’s the thing that’s the
most impressive to me is how light they are, but
how strong they are. You know, once you start
cutting in the shoe, you can feel the comfort and
the stability immediately, which is a big key. When
you have a low-top shoe or a shoe that is that light,
the thing that you want to make sure that it gets an
“A” on is stability. Making sure that the calcaneous
is locked in and that it’s sitting in there properly
and that it’s not sliding around on you.
Do you have any input into the colorways of
the shoe?
Well this is what I do: I sit down with the
designers, I sit down with Avar, and we just come
up with all these concepts, and I tell them what I
want in this shoe and the technology and so forth.
And they’ll go into the lab, and they come back
with the technology and the design of the shoe
per the inspiration that I’ve given them. When it
comes to the color schemes, I tell the designers,
“You guys just go have a good time and knock
yourselves out.” ’Cause, you know, this is what
they do, and the hard part is over. The hard part
has already been done. Now, I want you guys
to just have a good time, and they have a blank
canvas to trick it out.
Are there any materials or textures you like
most?
I like the snake print – the snake print has been
kind of my favorite.
How much importance do you place on your
shoe looking good in a casual setting?
Actually, none. That’s never even something
that’s crossed my brain. This shoe, I personally
wanted to play in. Whether it [works] well off the
court or not, is really irrelevant to me at the time.
Is there any one theme that really stands
out between all of your shoes?
It’s original. All of my shoes have all been original,
and that’s the one thing: that all my shoes stand
for themselves and there’re certain technological
components that we carry over from shoe to
shoe, but all of the designs have all been original.
You’re not going to see a shoe that you can say,
“Oh, it’s like that shoe or it’s like this shoe.” All of
my shoes are original concepts.
Can you explain what your logo means to
you?
The logo, to me, is more of a symbol and kind of
an inspirational symbol to me in terms of what
you use as fuel and what you use to drive you.
That symbol is where I store that and where I
hold that fuel.
This is also the first shoe of yours that has
your signature on it. Why is that?
It was just another touch that we put on the shoe
that we felt would just make it more personal
– to put my signature on it.
Your mentality as a determined and focused
individual and athlete seems to align with
Nike’s as a company. Did that play a part in
your decision to come to Nike?
Oh, no question. No question. I’m telling you, it
was like when Harry Potter landed in Hogwarts.
[laughs] He was home. I’m always around a
bunch of people who are competitive and just as
competitive as I am or just as passionate about
the sport as I am. I’m not looked at as being
different or anything like that because I’m ultra
competitive. I’m just around a bunch of people
who are exactly the same way as I am.
Lets talk about some of the past shoes that
you wore, starting in 2003. Were you a fan
of the Flight Huarache going back to the Fab
Five days?
It was a fun shoe, and I was very familiar with
it back in High School because of the Fab Five,
obviously. Those shoes were so tough to find,
and I think I only had one pair, and I only wore
them once a month. [laughs]
Was it different just because of the ankle
cut-away, or was there anything in particular
that was different about that shoe?
Well, the thing that I noticed, and even at that
early age, I always used to look at the technology
of a shoe, at that early age I could tell that my
ankle had a lot more freedom of movement,
which interested me because it felt different
than any of the other shoes that I played in. It felt
better and it moved better in that shoe.
Did wearing the Flight Huarache give you
any insights into what you wanted to see in
the 2K4?
Well yeah, we kind of said that we wanted the
2K4 to kind of go take it a step further. Like,
Huarache was a good place to start for us, now
what’s the next step? How do we take this
Zoom Kobe IV 37
interview
technology and increase that and take it to the
next level, both in weight and in stability, and we
were able to do that.
What did you like so much about the 2K4,
as you wore it last fall, and what made you
decide to keep coming back to it?
Well that was my first one, and I remember
sitting in a room with Avar and Tinker and I
dropped the Great White design on ’em, [laughs],
and we just hit the ground off and running with
a classic.
Were you aware of the Free technology
through the running line, and was it
something you wanted to see incorporated
into the 2K5?
Absolutely, and we talked about that, and I was
very open to it because if your foot can move
as God intended it to move, then you’re in a
good position. When you run in Free technology,
your foot is such that you can actually feel your
feet underneath you moving as they should, as
opposed to just being one…blocky…thing going up
and down the court.
The Zoom Kobe I had a much more solid and
sturdy look and feel than the 2Ks. Was that
a reflection of your playing style at the time?
Well with the Zoom 1, what I wanted to do
was I wanted to have more cushioning. It was
a season where I was coming off of some knee
injuries and some things like that. So, we actually
sacrificed some weight with this shoe for a lot
more cushioning. As soon as you put that shoe on,
you are going to see that it has a lot more cushion.
A lot of power forwards and a lot of players that
are bigger in stature enjoyed those shoes more
than some of the others because it had a lot
more cushion in them. Coming off of that shoe, I
wanted to get back to the lighter weight stuff.
Does the Kobe I hold a special significance
to you because of the 81-point game?
It’s special man, because when you see that shoe,
that’s the first thing people think of: the 81. It’s
special to have those moments with shoes and
how people tie in your years or games to a shoe.
What was you mind-state like during that
game?
I was just in – it was almost like a trance, where
you’re just relaxing and you’re playing and
everything is just flowing. You put a lot of work
into the offseason, and everything is just clicking.
Whose idea was it to incorporate
Considered as well as Free in the Kobe II?
That’s something that we decided to do. It’s
38 Zoom Kobe IV
always us sitting in a room just chopping it
up. The designer on that, Kenzo[Ken Link], is
extremely talented, and we just sat around the
table and chopped it and came up with a design
that I really liked. I love the Free Technology in
it; that really works well. It was good, but still,
the most special shoes that I enjoy the most is
when me and Avar are sitting around and we
come up and just brainstorm man, because that’s
just having certain guys that are on the same
wavelength and get each other.
With the II, you went back to the strap. Was
that something came up with, or did you
want to go back to the strap from the 2K
stuff?
The strap was comfortable, so we kind of did
take that from the 2K and just advanced it a bit.
The Kobe III is a very distinctive-looking
shoe – it draws a strong response from
anyone that sees it. Was it your idea to go
with such a daring look?
Well, me and Eric always just do stuff that’s true to
form and stuff that we enjoy. So, when people first
saw the shoe, they were like, “Oh – I don’t know.
I don’t know.” Then they see it in different colors
and different schemes and stuff is tricked out or
it’s the Lower Merion color, and then it’s like, “Oh
– that shoe is murder!” But that’s what we do;
we create stuff that you’re just not gonna see on
the shelf like any generic shoe, because it’s not a
generic shoe. It’s me and we fit our personality
into the shoe so it can’t be a shoe that looks like a
LeBron shoe or whoever else’s shoe. It has to be a
shoe that’s you and is your special shoe.
Both the II and III have a diamond-inspired
pattern based around your daughter
Diamante’s name. How much do you try and
add in those little personal touches to the
shoe?
Oh it’s always fun to do that, because that’s
part of my inspiration. So, we always try and put
things that inspire me within the shoe, but we
hide them like Easter eggs. [laughs]
Was minimizing weight becoming more of a
priority at the time of the Kobe III?
Well, it was always a goal of mine, outside of the
I. We always wanted to minimize weight, always,
and we wanted to continue to cut and continue
to slice it down. I told them after the II, “What
we’re going to do is, we’re going to continue to
cut weight, but we’re not gonna sacrifice stability,
and we’re not gonna sacrifice the cushioning of
the shoe.” And it seems, at the time, like why
the hell would you do both? [laughs] That was a
challenge that I gave to them, and they went back
to the lab, and they came back with that goal
being reached.
What were your first thoughts of the
Hyperdunk?
The thing that sold me on it was the technology.
I’m a real technology guy, and there’s not a lot of
people who would push that boundary or hop in
a shoe that’s so new or be liked or not liked. So, I
like to push those boundaries, and it was pretty
easy for me to jump into a shoe that fit everything
that I had been talking about for years.
All of your previous shoes included Zoom Air,
so what were your initial thoughts on Lunar
Foam?
I actually enjoyed it. It’s comfortable, man.
You know, the foam actually gives you a lot of
cushioning and a lot more stability, and like I said,
we continue to advance it and we continue to
progress it. I’m still a big fan of Zoom, but the
foam ain’t bad either.
How has your experience working with Eric
Avar evolved from model to model?
As soon as we first met, we hit it off instantly. The
first meeting with the 2K4, as soon as I started
to talk about the Great White and the design and
the sleekness of [the shoe] and how I wanted to
incorporate that into the shoe – “It’s fast and quick
and it can change directions, and it’s lightweight
and yadda, yadda, yadda” – and he got it right
away. Our whole conversation was about Great
White Sharks and Bull Sharks, and that was the
whole conversation. Everyone else in the room
was just kinda like, “What the hell are you guys
talking about?” [laughs] But, we were just talking
about a shoe, and he got it. Ever since then, that’s
how all of our meetings have been.
And as an athlete, how much does he push
you in performance? Were you familiar with
a designer like Avar that pushes things so
much?
Not really. I was familiar with some of the work
he had done, but to talk to someone that can
talk at the level that we talk at, it’s rare to find
someone like that. He enjoys the same things
that you enjoy, and he watches the same things
that you watch, and he gets inspired by the same
things that you get inspired by, and he gets it. We
play off of each other so well and it’s ridiculous.
We talked with Eric, and he mentioned
how big you are on metaphors, whether it
was the Orca Whale inspiring the Kobe II
or other shoes. Can you talk about the role
that metaphors from Spiderman played in
the Kobe IV?
Zoom Kobe IV 39
interview
The concept behind that is it being one and the
same. It’s that scene in the movie where he’s
trying to pry it [the suit] off of him, and he can’t
get it off of him because now it’s part of him.
And that’s how I want the shoe to be. I want the
shoe to be a part of my foot. I don’t want it to
be separate; I don’t want it to be my foot and
the shoe. I want the shoe and the foot to mesh
together.
What’s your familiarity with the outrigger in
your shoes, and how does that help you out
during a game?
The reason they put that in there was to be able
to reach that goal of being able to change those
directions. Knowing that when I rotate, we’ll see
pictures of my foot actually sliding to the outside
of the shoe, and that’s one of the things that we
were trying to cut out.
When did you make your first trip to Asia?
Umm…’99.
40 Zoom Kobe IV
When did you realize the level of popularity
you have with the Chinese fans?
This Olympics. This Olympics was pretty crazy.
This Olympics was beyond anything that I’ve ever
imagined.
Was there any specific event? I remember
you just trying to even enter the gym
being an ordeal and a huge mob of fans
surrounding you.
Well what’s funny with that is at the Olympics,
we couldn’t get in. The person I was with, Nico
[Harrison] from Nike, he didn’t have the pass to
get in through the back. I didn’t have my pass to
get in then, and they were really, really finicky
to let people in through there – and it sounds
crazy that I couldn’t get in – so we had to sneak
in through the main way and just go through
the normal entrance and then get down to the
player’s section. [laughs]
How did the Mentu project come about?
It was a concept that Nike pitched to me when
we were in Asia of doing a Kobe Mentu show,
and I was on board with it. Any time I have an
opportunity to reach out to kids and teach them
about the game – the game is so fun and it’s been
such an inspirational part of my life, and I try to
share that as much as possible.
Could you ever imagine a project like that
growing up? Did you have any idea that the
popularity of basketball would grow so much
all throughout that region?
The project came together very well, and the
show was very successful, and I’m happy that the
kids found out a lot about themselves and how
much better they can be. Basketball is just truly
a global sport, and they’re very knowledgeable
about the game from top to bottom, and they’re
very passionate about it. Basketball has come a
long, long way.
Were you surprised at their response to the
intensity of the training?
It was very demanding, but that’s what we
wanted to do was to push them and take them
to the point that they didn’t think they could
get beyond and then let them figure it out and
let them see if they wanted to push themselves.
And they did, they pushed themselves, and they
realized they could be better than they ever
imagined they could be, and that’s when we had
the magic.
How do you rank the Olympic Gold with
your NBA titles and MVP award?
Winning an Olympic Gold is second to none, and
it’s the most special moment that you’ll have as
an athlete. Being on that stage and representing
your country, there’s just no greater honor.
How did the location of the Games impact
the importance of winning?
It was just one of those things that happens once
every so often where it just comes along where
it’s that magic time where the Olympics are in
Beijing and it’s just a perfect setting. We were
all just extremely excited and thankful for the
opportunity.
How do you see basketball in China and the
rest of Asia evolving over the next few years?
I think it’s going to just continue to grow. We
have some players here that are doing some
special things. Everyone knows Yao, obviously,
and Yi is doing a great job in Jersey, and we have
a young kid here who has a lot of potential in
Sun Yue, so it’s going to continue to develop and
continue to get better.
Zoom Kobe IV 41
The low top

But a higher cut will at least help, right? Not so have decreased by almost six times in the NCAA a lot of stuff in the scientific literature about
says Nurse. He explains that the “wobble board thanks to evolving training methods ankle taping for example,” begins Nurse. “The
(a training device) is the only thing shown [to] mechanical advantage of ankle tape disappears

how
reduce ankle injuries – that’s it – there’s nothing
else in the literature shown to reduce ankle
injuries.” The difficulty comes from the simple
anatomy of the ankle joints. The top joint allows
the ankle to plantar and dorsal flex (to move up
and down), and the second allows it to invert
and evert (to roll from side to side). Plantar
flexion (when your heel is up and toe is down) is
a common and important position for your ankle
The hi-top vs. low-top debate appears to be
counter intuitive, because the high cut is stiffer
just sitting stationary. But when plantar flexed,
the line of force changes. You are working with
the same amount of material supporting you,
whether it is a high- or low-cut shoe. That area is
where resistance actually comes from, not higher
up on the ankle.[maybe a diagram to show this – I
before they hit the court. They go out, warm up
and stretch, and that mechanical advantage is
already gone. But what it does do is give you that
proprioception feel, and I think that’s important.”
There is a big difference, though, between a
mechanical advantage and just a feeling. That
feeling won’t help you prevent an injury. But the
mind is a powerful tool, and if playing in a low-

can you go? to be in when playing basketball. It serves as

excellent shock absorption to aid landings. The
problem is that when the foot is plantar flexed,
Th e Hig h v s . Low Deb ate it loses the protective qualities of the joint’s
Words by Zac Dubasik tendons, allowing increased motion from side
Photos courtesy od Nike to side, where you are more prone to invert
the ankle. It’s not all bad news though. Studies
show that over the past 25 years, ankle injuries
could do a crude one to show you how it would
be] Time and time again, studies evaluated by the
NSRL have shown no significant change in the
frequency of ankle injuries when wearing hi-tops,
even when it is paired with taping or bracing.
These other common protective methods
don’t seem to add any real benefit. “There is
top presents a mental barrier to playing at full
speed, then a higher cut may help you feel more
secure. The problem is that it also may limit your
potential. According to research analyzed by the
Nike Sports Research Lab (NSRL), a high-cut may
also limit your range of motion and may lead to
a decreased performance on agility courses and
vertical jump assessments. Nurse says that, “If

n the late ’80s and throughout much of the

’90s, basketball kicks with sky-high cuts were
the norm. Shoes like the Command Force, Air
Unlimited and Air Max CB ’94 appeared to
some to be a cross between a hoops shoe
and a cowboy boot. They had an undeniably
Air Command Force
cool style and casual appeal though, which
went along perfectly with the excesses of the
times. But along with all of the extra protection
that they were supposedly providing came
added weight, a restricted field of motion and
limited breathability. All the while, a simple fact
remained: ankles kept getting injured.

According to Matt Nurse, Senior Researcher at

the Nike Sports Research Lab (NSRL), the ugly
Air Unlimited
reality is that ankle injuries just happen if you
play hoops. He explains that with basketball,
statistically speaking, “if you play 1000 times, you
are going to turn your ankle at least once. That is
a guarantee.” Whether it is through contact with
High speed video shows that by locking the heel in place, the ankle can stay firmly supported in a low-top even when making harsh cuts.
another player, a harsh landing, a sudden change
of direction or an abrupt stop, sooner or later,
it will come. Not surprisingly, ankle inversion
injuries are the most common injury in basketball.
Air Max CB ‘94

42 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 43

The low top
hi-top shoes were that much better, you’d see
guys playing soccer with hi-top shoes – you’d see
tennis players playing in hi-top shoes. There’s a
feeling that comes with it, and there’s a culture
that goes with it, but you can get it other ways.”
Taking that research into account, it becomes
obvious that a low-top sneaker will work
perfectly well for hoops. Low-tops aren’t
anything new in the world of basketball, looking
back to even the Air Force 1 Lows. Although they
have been often used as a casual shoe more often
than on court, players like Steve Nash and Mike
Bibby have been wearing low-cut kicks on court
for years. Going even further back, the Air Jordan
III could be looked at for originally leading the
trend of sneaker height first starting to lower. Its
three-quarter-cut was in major opposition to the
shoes of that time, but when it performed the
way it did, people took notice. So, while Kobe
isn’t the first person in the NBA to play in a low-
top, he definitely is the highest-profile player to
currently, or ever, have a low-top signature shoe.
44 Zoom Kobe IV
The use of the Y-shaped, segmented heel allows for better ankle alignment upon impact.
That shoe is the Zoom Kobe IV. Kobe sought
an increased freedom through a cut that would
allow a fuller range of movement without ever
having to struggle against the shoe. “Kobe is very
performance driven,” begins Nurse. “He saw
that there were performance advantages.” By
focusing on heel stability through a meticulously
padded collar and heel, a skin-like fit throughout
the upper and exemplary traction thanks to
added herringbone, the Nike team has been able
to meet the performance needs that Kobe’s play
demands, and do so in the low-top package that
he wanted. An additional and important feature
is the Y-shaped segmentation of the heel, which
was first seen on the Zoom Kobe III. (IMAGE
OF HEEL AREA OF ZKIII AND ZKIV) When the
either side compresses upon impact, the split
sole allows the heel to then maintain a better
alignment, which is so critical to preventing injury
by providing a stable base. Check out page 50 for
the full breakdown of the Zoom Kobe IV.
For the NSRL, working with an athlete like
Kobe offers a rare opportunity. He is constantly
bouncing ideas off of his trainer and works back
and forth with Nike to fine-tune every last detail.
“Kobe is very in touch with his performance needs,”
says Nurse. “He can speak to points and then give
a reason for it, too.” Being able to connect on that
level gives Kobe an edge above and beyond his
already pure physical advantages on court. It also
helps the NSRL that much more in their continued
pursuit of excellence in footwear development.
Constantly striving for that edge is what allows
them to attempt such a highly visible project like
making the Zoom Kobe IV a low-top in the first
place. Through the use of external references on
projects like this, they were able to objectively
decide if it was even a path worth pursuing. And
once that had been determined, and coupled
with in-house research once the product hit the
testing phase, the Zoom Kobe IV was able to be
fine-tuned until it arrived at its final stage. “For
all intents and purposes, I’m Nike’s worst critic,”
says Nurse. It is refreshing to know what with
researchers like him involved, the idea of a low-
top hoops shoe – one that is every bit as safe as a
hi-top – can become a reality.
Zoom Kobe IV 45
Fly wire

Flywire Words by Nick DePaula

Photography by Steve Mullholand

The Path To Lightweight Containment
istorically, the term “innovation” has been thrown around the sneaker
landscape in an almost reckless fashion. As brands struggle to come up with new
silhouettes and models for each upcoming season, this word is often used to profess
a new industry-shifting technology or improvement made in sneakers. Sometimes,
that just might be true, but it seems that more often than not, innovation around
the industry is filled with catchy terms and phrases that, as of late, haven’t been
living up to their billing. At Nike, there’s a sector of the expansive U.S.-based World
Heaquarters that tends to do things a bit differently when it comes to more honest
innovation, and Jay Meschter would know all about that. After all, he’s the Innovation
Director of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen. A 12-year veteran at Nike, Meschter
previously worked at Apple, designing their computers with the same crew that is
now universally renowned for creating the iPod and other product designs. After
spending several years at Nike designing eyewear and equipment, the chance to
move into the Kitchen was presented to him, and he immediately knew it would
be the best place for his talents, as the new workspace inspired by Nike legend
Bill Bowerman’s passion for creativity and problem solving provided the long-term
product timeline that would help give birth to the innovations of the future.

The very first pin model that Jay Meschter built over seven years ago. This simple model
would spark all of the inspiration for what we now know to be Flywire.

46 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 47

Fly wire
This model shows Flywire progressing into the more technical and calculated alignments
that we see today, as the heel features a crossing of strands for maximum lockdown.
fibers I wanted, and I would align them,” explains
Meschter. “That’s the whole premise behind this,
and this fundamentally changes the thinking of
how you’re going to build shoes, because you’re
not going to do it in overlays. And that is where
the magic is—in just that perfect alignment, that
sort of mechanized alignment of fiber, because
it is so purposeful. You know exactly where it is
going.”

In Flywire, it’s important for the panel to be

protective, firm and supportive against lateral
cuts, but be as light and flexible as possible so
the shoe’s transition and comfort can still be
maximized. An easy analogy for Meschter can
be found in everyone’s favorite childhood toy:
the Slinky. The toy can flex freely and still remain
incredibly firm and strong if you place pressure
on its coils from inside. “The Slinky is incredibly
flexible in that direction between each one of
those cells, but if I’m inside that, it’s completely
belted,” he explains. “So the dichotomy that
you’re playing with within this product is that
any time I have wire and [it flexes inward], it
still moves that way. When I cross it over itself,
when I do a double cross, I’ve locked it 100%. So,
we’re very strategic about where we over-cross
and where we don’t.”

The innovation that Nike is currently most proud
of is Flywire technology, but it surely wasn’t
something that developed over night. It was a
long and arduous process that began well over
seven years ago, with Meschter alone in his office,
tinkering with new ways to cradle the foot and
help reduce weight in footwear. The very first
insight he had in the development of Flywire
can be seen in what is referred to as the “pin
model,” upon which he placed strands of string
strategically over a foot last. The initial goal was
quite simple: How can you minimize the weight
of a shoe without sacrificing the support and
stability necessary for high-performance sports?
Before he could even get to the point of evolving
that first model of the last and start crafting
and beginning to create what would eventually
become Flywire, Meschter had to begin to
break down the way footwear construction has
always been definitively perceived to be. “Just
think of any Nike shoe that has a lot of overlays,”
he explains. “Think of a running shoe, all of the
overlays you’ve got. The whole methodology of
footwear construction the past couple hundred
years, dating back to, god knows, Romans, has
been ‘I take a roll of material and I cut out a piece,
drape that over the last, and if I need strength,
what do you do? You put another piece over
the top of that.’ It’s the layer construction.” The
use of layers in building footwear has certainly
been a mainstay across all brands, categories
and performance needs within the industry,
but Meschter hoped to look beyond the more
traditional and perhaps archaic methods of
construction and tackle the core principles of
athletic needs: support and light weight.
As he began to look deeper into the history of
footwear in hopes of fundamentally changing the
way our shoes are constructed, he immediately
noticed a time in which reversing the traditional
layer construction didn’t work. It was during the
1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and it seemed
all anyone could talk about was American sprinter
Michael Johnson’s gold shoes, which were not
only a bright metallic gold, but also a single layer
upper and one of the lightest shoes Johnson had
ever worn. He would go on to win the 200-meter
and 400-meter individual sprints – he was quite
a fast man! – but, at the same time, Meschter
realized that in reducing the amount of layers on
that shoe, Nike also compromised the support of
the shoe. “In that model, to make it lighter, you
take off all of those overlays, and then pretty
soon you don’t have a shoe that’s very strong,”
he says. “So, what we were fundamentally trying
to do was change that idea or formula of making
footwear.”
With what they learned from the ’96 Olympics in
mind, Meschter then was faced with the struggle
of not only sorting through such a concept, but
also then determining how that way of thinking
and change in construction would manifest itself
in a shoe. “A lot of times you do that, where
you try something and you know conceptually
where you want to go, but you don’t know how
you’re going to make it,” he admits. Just after
working with the pin model, he began to realize
that in order for a shoe to incorporate minimal
layering along the upper, it would have to feature
a harness for the foot and a way in which the
shoe could cradle the foot and support it during
an athlete’s harsh lateral movements or bursts of
speed in running. He continued down the path
of tinkering with potential alignments of string,
and he also realized that it would take a series of
tensile strands that could wrap over the foot in
order to provide enough support. The support,
he would find, became a result of the precise
alignment of the strands of fibers, which are
similar to the way in which a bridge’s cables are
suspended vertically to maximize the strength
and tension. By eliminating the overuse of layers
and relying on the strength of a series of fibers,
the area in between the fibers could be cut out
to help reduce the shoe’s overall weight. “If I
was really smart about it, I would just take the
As he figured out the research behind how a
shoe’s support could be provided by just this
type of a series of strands, he then began the
process of sorting through his ideas and trying to
figure out a way that such a shoe could actually
be created. Just as he was starting to progress
towards finding a solution to create a sample of
what he had in mind by using stitch patterns, he
stumbled across serious production struggles
and limitations. “When we did the pin model,
we actually went out to see guys in Schenectady,
New York, who were doing helicopter rotors,”
reflects Meschter. “[They used] an amazing 3D
winding machine, but, you know, it’s going to be
a $50,000 shoe. [laughs] So, we shelved it.” The
next few years became a dark period for Flywire,
as no progress was being made and constructing
the shoe with a 3-dimensional armature would
be excessively costly, even if it was the only way
the shoe could be made. “And then it wasn’t
until about three or four years after that initial
model that we stumbled on the embroidery
machine,” says Meschter. “It was like we could
do this flat and pretty much get the same
result.” The embroidery machine found in a Nike
development factory became the technology’s
saving grace, and it eventually was used to create
the strands of Flywire by stitching them as a flat
panel that could be molded to the contours of
the human foot and constructed into the upper
of a shoe.
The first embroidery machine that they worked
with wasn’t particularly special or different
from the other machines they used for stitching
purposes, but it was actually a glitch on the
machine that eventually worked in the favor
of Flywire. At the factory level, normally an
embroidery machine is only capable of shorter
and more concise stitches, but in order for
Flywire to work, the stitches had to be long
strands across the shoe’s upper in order to retain
strength. “I often get asked, ‘Why?’ and if you
go to stretch a strand, it’s got a lot of elasticity
to it, simply because I’m taking the thread and
I’m going up and down the material and you just
made a nice spring. When I go point to point, the
fiber has integrity,” Meschter points out. “So
it was very critical for us to do that, and the
machine was not designed to do the job. The
machine had a limit of 12 millimeters, and then it
cuts off. And so we literally went in and adjusted
the settings and kind of fooled the machine
into thinking it could do longer. Some of these
[strands] are super long, and for one giant stitch
we’re looking at around 300 millimeters.” The
ability of the machine to be able to stitch the
difference in the length of the strands simply
became a make or break decision in order for
Flywire to become a reality. “The machine wasn’t
designed for it, but it does a really good job of
pulling this off,” beams Meschter. “And then we
discovered that pretty much every embroidery
machine in Asia can be tuned to do the same
thing. We just had to undo this stop that was on
there, and we were able to do it.”
Once Meschter and the team of developers
he was working with were able to solve the
embroidery machine problems they faced, the
last step in perfecting Flywire and making it
ready for production rested on finding the right
fabric for the strands and also refining their
alignment. “It becomes critical that you can
place [the strands] accurately, because now
what we’re doing is much more making tendons
and muscles on the outside of your foot than

48 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 49

Fly wire
we are strapping material around,” Meschter
says. They also decided to make the material a
package composition, meaning there is a laminate
structure that houses the strands, and there is
also a top and bottom pattern of stitches. “For
every line you see, there is a perfect parallel
behind it,” he says. As the team began to get
more comfortable with where the alignment of
the strands were placed, they still had to come to
a decision on which fiber material they would be
incorporating, and there were several.
The very first runable prototype that the
Innovation Kitchen created featured strands of
Kevlar, a composite known for its high strength
properties that can often be found in bullet-proof
vests. “That shoe is one of the strongest things
you can imagine because it is made out of Kevlar,”
says Meschter. But, as the team began conducting
an extensive series of tests, they found that the
Kevlar strands were quite vulnerable to heat
as well as compromised strength when flexed,
forcing Meschter to look to other fabrics that
were more durable under conditions footwear
faces. “Kevlar has street appeal. Everyone knows
bullet-proof vests, but it also doesn’t flex very
well over time,” he explains. “Vectran proved
to be a much better fiber, albeit it doesn’t have
that street credibility.” And so, the team went
with Vectran – a fiber that boasts absolutely
zero strength loss when flexed, as compared to
Kevlar, which can lose up to 25 percent of its
strength. Obviously in high-performance athletic
footwear, a shoe can be placed under an array
50 Zoom Kobe IV
When Flywire was almost ready for production, its strands were stitched onto a flat sheet
in order to get more precise and taught stitches within the structure.
of stresses and flexing, and a fiber’s response to
those pressures is quite crucial. “In the end, the
funny thing was after all these exotic fibers, the
Vectran turned out to be great. Vectran is great
when I’m squeezing that last second of someone
racing around the track,” says Meschter. “When
you’re getting that last second out of the guy on
the track, there’s a slight difference.”
As it appeared the team of Innovation experts
from Nike’s Innovation Kitchen were getting
closer to their goal of making the shoes ready
for production, they faced quite a few struggles,
such as convincing all of their elite athletes that
this new minimal construction method could
harness their forces during their most important
competitions. While Flywire may have made
its official debut at the 2008 Beijing Summer
Olympics, Meschter began having athletes wear
Flywire-based shoes in competition over a year
prior in order for them to become comfortable
with the new approach. “You can’t just show up
on game day at the Olympics and hand this guy
the shoe and say, ‘Go race in this,’” he laughs. “If
you look at the World Championships closely and
you look at their shoes, they’re all white, and they
are all Flywire shoes, but they’re all undercover
because they’re all white-on-white, because
we wanted these guys to get comfortable in
these beforehand.” Running was certainly the
first sport Meschter had in mind when he began
refining the properties of Flywire, but as he says,
“it doesn’t take long to connect the dots and say,
‘Let’s get the weight out of basketball, too.’”
“We were like, ‘We’ve got to prove to you that
‘Geez, this could really make something different.’”
While running may be a linear sport and
basketball can place some of the harshest lateral
demands upon a shoe, there was never a doubt
in Meschter’s mind that Flywire could work in
hoops. “I would say within the first year that
we were doing track spikes, we said this would
make an unbelievable basketball shoe. And
basketball was kind of intrigued,” he reflects. He
approached the basketball group about the idea
of incorporating Flywire into their division, and
immediately there seemed to be some disbelief
that such a minimal construction could support
the frames of the sport’s largest athletes. “They
were saying, ‘You know our shoes are pretty
lightweight,’” says Meschter. “I’d say, ‘Well how
light can you go?’ Then they’d say, ‘Well, our guys
are pretty big, you’re not going to be able to hold
them in that string.’”
So, in order to convince the basketball division
that Flywire could indeed support even the
largest of frames, Meschter had a sample made
that featured extensive allowances of support
strands. While running shoes feature Vectran
as their support fiber, basketball shoes that
include Flywire actually contain strands of high-
tenacity nylon, which provide a bit more give to
hug the contours of your foot more closely, and
can also be colored for some cosmetic effect.
Under several high-speed cameras, the sample
Flywire upper that sits atop an Air Jordan XI
tooling proved to not only keep the foot locked
in perfectly over the footbed, but it actually
outperformed previous Nike Basketball shoes
like the Huarache 2K5. “Just naturally, basketball
is focused on making the right shoe for basketball
players and not some gimmick,” admits Meschter.
you can make a decent shoe out of this first of
all.’ I would say once they realized and accepted
the [nylon] is strong enough to do that, then it’s,
From there, the Innovation team continued to
develop Flywire for use in basketball shoes, and
the Nike Hyperdunk would be the first shoe
to showcase the new technology, designed by
two of the Innovation Kitchen’s finest designers:
Eric Avar and Tom Leudecke. The Hyperdunk
was not only a great accomplishment in
providing a lightweight package that performed
outstandingly, but it also came in a modern and
refined presentation. “From that standpoint,
you always think internally, too, about how the
consumer is going to react,” says Meschter. “So
I think there is a lot of balancing in that original
Hyperdunk about how do you get something that
is consumer recognizable and yet introduces a
new idea that doesn’t make them uncomfortable.
I think Eric and Tom did an excellent job on
that first one, stringing that fine line between
consumer acceptance and a new idea.”
Of course, having the alpha player in Kobe
Bryant to lead the Hyperdunk on-court didn’t
hurt either, as each time down the hardwood,
Bryant would validate the shoe’s containment
claims with his slashing moves and hard cuts to
the basket. “He’s a great guy because he gets it,”
explains Meschter. “He’s articulate, he knows
what he’s talking about, he knows what he’s
asking for, and he’s pushing the line. There’re a lot
of guys that come in [and say], ‘Well, I kind of like
what you’ve got.’ He’ll come in and say, ‘I want
something that does more of this,’ … Because
he’s so athletic, he can do it, too.” In order for
the Innovation Kitchen’s products to become a
success, having an athlete like Kobe Bryant to
draw feedback from and work with in crafting the
next evolution of footwear only further helps the
design and development process. “That’s a dream
client, it really is, because he’s pushing us as much
as we’re pushing what he can do,” Meschter says.
“That’s when you make leaps, for sure that’s when
you make leaps … He’s going to take the rest of
the industry with him.” As Flywire has already
received a tremendous amount of adoration in
both running and basketball, you’ll continue to
see its use expand across all categories within
Nike. The technology will reach across a variety
of sports, because as Meschter sees it, “At the
This was the very first Flywire basketball shoe, with an upper featuring huge allowances of Flywire all atop the iconic Air
Jordan XI tooling. It was created to prove that Flywire could support the movements of basketball players.
end of the day, I have yet to find a category
where lightweight, responsive, close fitting
to the foot doesn’t matter. We found a better
mousetrap.”
While this past summer’s Olympic Games surely
represented the pinnacle of Flywire’s visibility up
to this point with the extensive media coverage
given to the Games, Meschter won’t ever lose
sight of the fact that it took a seven-year journey
of trial and error, a bit of luck, and relentless
persistence to finally bring the new technology
to the market. “I work in the Kitchen, and the
Kitchen is a pure innovation investment,” says
Meschter. “I like to think that you put money in,
and you’re going to get some results out, and I
think we have a talented crew working in here. I
know for a fact that we would not have done this
if I were sitting, for instance, in the day-to-day
business category, because it took us seven years
and three years of solid work to make it work.
You need to have the breathing room to do that.
That’s why I think we [can create something
like Flywire] first. We invest in it.” While most
products at Nike and other brands go through
a 14-month timeline and a series of checkpoints
along the way in the normal business categories,
it’s that extra breathing room and open-ended
space to try new concepts and new approaches
to design that make the Innovation Kitchen so
successful. “Believe me, there’s many months
where we were just hitting the wall,” sighs
Meschter. “That’s just part of the deal, and you’re
like, ‘OK, this is a waste of time,’ and then there’s
just that one day, the right glue and the right
string and the right humidity of the afternoon,
and it worked. But you’re not going to get that
unless you have that opportunity to try it. There
aren’t many companies out there that understand
that, and that’s the convenience of having a
designer [in Mark Parker] for a CEO. He gets it.”
Zoom Kobe IV 51
sneakerphile

zoom kobe iv
taking you to daring new heights
Words by Nick DePaula
Photography by Steve Mullholand
and Zac Dubasik

52 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 53

 sneakerphile

Earlier samples show the evolution of

the collar height as the low-top cut was
refined and perfected.
Senior Footwear Designer, Eric Avar

hen Kobe Bryant and Eric Avar meet

Kobe’s #24 on the heel of this sample made its way to the final desgn.
The original outsole design had a more stylized look to the splatter-like
design. Keeping with the performance-first ethos of the shoe, it was
eventually changed to a herringbone pattern for maximum traction.
several times throughout the year to discuss
the next stage and the next evolution of
Kobe’s performance footwear, it’s unlike the
required meetings that most other athletes and
designers must sit through. These guys are on
the same wavelength, with a similar approach
to performance at all costs and a similar goal
of trying new things, and not just for the
sake of being different, but because there’s a
performance insight that backs where they’re
headed. Avar, a Senior Footwear Designer in
Nike’s secretive Innovation Kitchen, always
looks forward to discussions with Bryant, as
the two bounce ideas back and forth, and they
have developed a progressive vision for different
performance attributes that might help Kobe’s
game. “I personally always like to just get
some time for some honest design time,” he
says. “There’s a time and place for marketing
and strategies and things like that, but I like to
get some time to talk about design.” Since the
first time they met in 2003, just as Bryant signed
with Nike, they “clicked right away,” according

54 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 55

sneakerphile
definitely this perception that ankle support
has to come in a high top or a ¾ height.” While
the Zoom Kobe line has become known for its
industry-pushing performance in all three of its
iterations up to this point, never before has one
of Bryant’s signature shoes featured anything
close to a low cut. “I asked him two or three
times, ‘You’re sure you want a low?’ And right
away, he says, ‘Yeah. I don’t need all this stuff
around my ankle, and in fact, I want to prove to
athletes and consumers that you don’t need all
this stuff.’” Avar explains that according to Kobe,
“People might question, like, ‘Can you play in a
low?’ and I’ll go drop 50 and say, ‘Yeah, you can
play in a low-top.’”

As Bryant became set on the direction of his

Early sketches of the Zoom Kobe IV.
to both, as they were instantly on the same page
about their goals for lightweight, supportive
and responsive footwear. Bryant’s latest shoe,
the Zoom Kobe IV, is once again an extension
of that mentality that the two share, and it was
born from a singular request made by Kobe.
“He always comes with a deep, insightful and
almost philosophical point of view of inspiration,”
says Avar, “whether it’s an inspiration on the
metaphor side or also on the performance side.
This one, in particular, was on the performance
side, and he said, ‘I want the lowest, lightest
weight basketball shoe.’ I asked him, ‘You mean,
like a ¾ height?’ ‘Low-top,’ he says. ‘Soccer,
Mercurial-type low?’ He just looks at me and
says, ‘Yes!’”
After their meeting, Avar and his fellow
Innovation Kitchen designer Tom Luedecke set
out to build a shoe that not only was rooted
in achieving a lower height and lighter weight
without compromising support, but it was also
backed by years of findings by Nike’s Sports
Research Lab that showed playing in low-tops
posed no greater risk of injury as compared to
playing in a higher cut shoe. “He’s coming at
this from a performance standpoint, and he just
believes that, ‘I don’t need all this crap around
my ankle.’ He thinks it’s going to help his game
with his quickness, his speed and his agility,” Avar
explains. “All of which we’ve thought from the
Nike Sports Research Lab for years, but there’s
next shoe’s design and silhouette, Luedecke and
Avar attacked just how they would position the
height and stance, hoping to offer more range
of motion for Kobe during play. “When Eric first
came back and said, ‘Hey, he wants a low, like
a soccer-type low,’ I said, ‘Great, lets build him
one,’” says Luedecke. “So, we built a III bottom
with literally a Ronaldinho upper, just to say, ‘Hey,
are we on the right track with this, and is this
what we’re talking about?’” After wearing the
one-of-one prototype during his own private
workouts – which means nothing short of a
game-speed session of countless jumpers, driving
moves and agility drills – Kobe could already tell
the difference in fit and feel along the upper, and
he felt no less stable or secure than when he
was in his mid-top predecessors. “We really just
wanted to illustrate the point, but it was also a
gut check, like, ‘Is this what you’re really saying?’”
says Luedecke. “So it was for him to wear around
and shoot around in and get used to so that we
knew we were on the right track.” Once they
heard all of Kobe’s glowing feedback towards
the proposed lowered height, it was now up to
Avar and Luedecke to begin the design process
of crafting his next signature shoe, and no matter
the inspiration, faced quite a difficult challenge
since his two previous shoes, the Zoom Kobe III
and the Hyperdunk, were easily some of the best
performing sneakers of this decade.
As they do every year, the designers sat down
and itemized the design cues that Kobe really
liked from his previous shoes, and they also
noted things to improve upon. “Kobe wore
the III and the Hyperdunk all in one year, and
there’s definitely some learnings that he had from
those shoes,” says Luedecke. “We have a lot
of learnings from those shoes, and we decided,
let’s take a best case scenario of the shoes and
take the best parts from each of them. There’s a
continuation and a logical progression here, not and think that really, if we can get the heel to lock you can get to the foot. The stability doesn’t only
only for him, but for us and anyone that plays in really well, that does a lot of work for us, and come from the bottom, the stability comes from
basketball.” Most notably, Bryant has been a then once we get the midfoot more locked down, the upper and it’s a systematic approach. We
huge fan of the pronounced outrigger that offers then you really can begin to bring the silhouette started that on the Hyperdunk and we definitely
up great lateral stability and support, as well down,” explains Luedecke. “You can’t just take want to exemplify that on the IV.”
as Zoom Air for responsive cushioning and a any other shoe and just drop it lower, you have to
Carbon Fiber midfoot shank for a “springier” feel, do the homework of the internals and how close While the upper may take on a more simplistic
as Kobe describes it. Once Avar and Luedecke
gathered up all of the information to be had, it
was time to build the Zoom Kobe IV.
Upper:
Understandably, the first thing you’ll notice
on the Zoom Kobe IV is its purposefully lower
height. For some, playing in a low-top is almost a
taboo concept, as for years it has been ingrained
in every baller’s mind that a higher cut equals
more ankle support. “Not so,” say Kobe Bryant,
Eric Avar, Tom Luedecke and countless others at
Nike. With a focus placed on heel lockdown and
an ergonomic fit within the shoe that slopes to
the contours of the human foot, the Zoom
Kobe IV aims to offer not only comparable
support to shoes of a higher cut,
but actually greater stability and
control of Kobe’s next step.
“We did look back at the
2K4’s external
counter

56 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 57

sneakerphile
and it’s like, ‘Oh man, why the hell didn’t I think
of that?’” he says. “But what’s behind that is
really a year straight of Jay Meschter working on
Flywire and thinking outside of the box to turn
it into a lightweight composite and a lightweight
structure.”
In terms of the details to be found on the
upper, there’s several firsts along the otherwise
conservatively designed sneaker. On the medial
side of each sneaker lies a series of perforations,
and each shoe has a varying pattern with a
different set of emphasized perforations. When
closely read, you’ll notice a “2” along the left
shoe and a “4” along the right shoe, tying in
to Bryant’s jersey number. At the heel of both
shoes, the aforementioned external heel counter
aims to add lockdown to the shoe, but along
the right shoe, you’ll also find Kobe’s signature
within the heel counter, flowing nicely along
the shape of the piece and conveying Bryant’s
signature stamp of approval. While other athletes
have been pretty vocal in having their logo the
same size, if not bigger, than Nike’s trademark
Swoosh, Bryant doesn’t so much mind when the
Swoosh plays a large role in his sneakers. “The
Swoosh has still been pretty dominant in his
product, and he’s respectful of that, and he likes
being part of the Nike family,” says Avar. “He also
likes the Sheath logo, so we always try and play
on that prominently.” Though the application or
treatment of his logo may have varied from shoe
to shoe, there’s definitely, as Luedecke says, “a
natural progression from shoe to shoe and a
consistent language of the placement of his logo
on the tongue.”
Midsole:
If there were one piece of the Zoom Kobe
IV that drafted most off of the previous shoes
that Bryant has worn, it would probably be
the midsole. It features similar attributes like
a pronounced outrigger, as well as a deeply
sculpted medial arch and a low stance for great
court feel. While the main difference between
the Hyperdunk and Kobe IV tooling
that Kobe noted was traction,
the two shoes share nearly the same cushioning
systems, as both feature Zoom Air and Lunar
Foam. At the heel is an 8mm Zoom Air unit for
great responsive cushioning, and at the forefoot
is an embedded 8mm Lunar Foam unit to help
reduce weight from previous shoes in the line
and still provide a spongy and soft cushioned ride.
The IV will be the first shoe in Kobe’s signature
line to incorporate Lunar Foam, which originally
debuted in the Hyperdunk. The cushioning
element was originally inspired by Avar and
fellow Innovation Kitchen Senior Designer
Kevin Hoffer’s quest for a lightweight cushion
that would feel similar to “running on pillows,”
according to Hoffer. During the time they spent
trying to find what would become the next
evolution of cushioning that Nike as a company
has become so famous for, the two decided to
look towards more practical resources. “We
looked at our cushioning systems, and we said
‘We really want to be light and mobile, but maybe
it’s not about some new major invention of a
mechanical cushioning system,’” says Hoffer.
“Maybe it’s almost ultra lightweight, springy foam.”

In order to find that balance between light

The Zoom Kobe IV takes shape.
look than the Zoom Kobe III from a year ago, the
design stems from Kobe’s performance needs,
as the shoe’s overlays and components are all
geared towards providing fit and support. Along
the heel, a TPU external counter provides the
lockdown necessary for such a height to even
be possible, and at the same time, the non-
traditional construction of the shoe’s heel helps
to eliminate weight. “It doesn’t have an internal
counter; it’s literally just the external counter and
the foam and that’s it,” says Luedecke. “That’s
how we’re able to get to this light of a shoe, by
taking some of the thicker and heavier material
that we use on the internal heel counter out of
the shoe and making the heel more beautiful.”
Just above the heel is the shoe’s foam-backed
collar, which has been given the task of providing
fit and comfort right against the wearer’s malleoli.
“For me, the personal biggest quest on this whole
thing is the thing that you can’t see at all – the
internal heel foam,” admits Luedecke. “The collar
foam literally took close to the entire time of the
process of making this shoe to get this right.”
weight and responsiveness, the developers and
engineers within the Innovation Kitchen spent
the last few years fine-tuning the foam-based
unit, mixing traditional EVA with Nitrate rubber
for more bounce than standard foams like Phylon
or just EVA. “When you look at our foams or
anybody’s foams in the industry, there’s a few
metrics that just kind of all triangulate one
another,” says Hoffer. “One is weight, one is
The heel contains quite a bit of the science of responsiveness or just the amount of
the shoe, where Luedecke and Avar carefully
studied every last millimeter of padding in order
to make sure the collar provided the perfect
balance of comfort and sharp fit, and the rest
of the Zoom Kobe IV features targeted support
and fit as well. The forefoot incorporates a
molded toe cap made of synthetic leather, patent
leather or a faux reptile skin, depending on the
colorway, and the midfoot is blessed with Nike’s
Flywire Technology, which does a tremendous
job of reducing weight as compared to more
traditional materials while at the same time
providing greater support. “The external heel
counter, the molded internal collar and the
Flywire upper – if you get those three elements
right then you’ll have a very secure and stable
upper,” says Luedecke. The Kobe IV may seem to
be less than complicated at the surface, but that’s
just how Avar wants it to appear, with all of the
thoughtful design cues and innovations remaining
subtle and purposeful. “That’s the mark of good
design. Something ultimately seems so simple,

58 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 59

sneakerphile
it was the notion of having a second skin. It
captured the essence of what we wanted to
achieve in having a second skin and in getting
closer to the foot.” The contrasting colored
rubber graphic represents that Venom inspiration,
but it also serves to highlight the multi-directional
traction that can help Bryant as he stops and
turns at any moment of a game. “There is an
element of the radial herringbone pattern that
speaks to cutting and cutting motions in every
direction,” says Luedecke. “It’s not just your
regular herringbone fill from heel to toe, it’s
actually engineered because you’re cutting at
every single edge on that shoe, and all of those
things are considered in the traction approach.”

The rest of the outsole’s inspirations once again

come from performance needs and what has
previously worked in Kobe’s line, such as its
purposeful outrigger. “The outrigger is something

energy lost that the foam will take on, and then
there’s the softness of it.” In Lunar Foam, the
team within the Innovation Kitchen feels they
were able to find the right combination of those
three variables, without sacrificing any one
component in order to get to a lighter weight,
softer or more responsive feel. When Bryant
is dealing with Nike’s designers, he takes his
involvement seriously and takes an active interest
in the materials and cushioning elements that
make up his shoe, leaving the final measurements
and adjustments to Nike’s trained professionals.
“So much of it is just trust and building a
relationship and building trust,” says Avar. “As
detailed as Kobe is about things, I think he really
trusts us to take care of the millimeters of stuff.
He’ll stay with the bigger picture of things.”

Outsole:
While the upper and midsole incorporate proven
elements of several past Zoom Kobe shoes like
the toe cap support overlay and sculpted heel
counter, the IV’s outsole also relies on tried
and true essentials like its herringbone traction
pattern. The pattern features quite a burst-like
aesthetic, and for good reason, as Kobe once
again infused his inspiration into the shoe’s design.
“The Spiderman 3 Venom character is something
that Kobe talked about to us,” explains Luedecke.
“He got really hyped about this character and

60 Zoom Kobe IV Zoom Kobe IV 61

sneakerphile
that stays and players have said they like that,”
says Luedecke. “We’re always trying to push the
degree of outrigger, but it always seems to come
back to a zone that you see in the end product.
We’re confident this is where it needs to be, both
for durability and for stability.” As the outsole
may seemingly at first glance appear to be
simplified with its full herringbone design, indeed
there’s quite a bit of unassuming science in the
flex grooves found throughout the shoe that help
to provide added flexibility and transition. “This
is a more graphic play, but it really came from
the Free-based lines,” describes Luedecke. “The
heel has the Y-shaped crash pad and there’s also
the forefoot medial and lateral transitions.” When
compared to the Hyperdunk, the IV features a
similarly sized “credit-card” carbon fiber midfoot
shank, but coupled with a more radiused heel
and the Free-principled grooves that Luedecke
references earlier, the shoe provides Kobe with
the buttery smooth heel-to-toe transition he’s
come to love. “They have similar construction,
but there’s a little more flexibility in the forefoot
of the IV as compared to the Hyperdunk and
he picked up on that immediately,” Luedecke
says. With the upper focusing on fit along the
midfoot, collar and heel, there wasn’t as much
room to play with the look of the shoe as
each panel was intrinsically tied to
the performance needs of that
specific zone or area. But,
along the outsole the design
tandem of Avar and
Luedecke was able to
have a bit more fun with
the Venom inspiration
directly from Kobe. “As
a graphic element, it
also tied in well to
the art and the
background
62 Zoom Kobe IV
behind the shoe, and we were able to balance
the science and art of the shoe like we normally
try to do,” Luedecke says.
The Importance
of Low:
After a single request was made nearly two
years ago by Bryant to play in the lightest, lowest
possible sneaker, Nike has responded with an
industry-shifting signature shoe that’s rooted
in science and research and offers the support
and stability that Kobe needs to endure the
thinking and all of the reasoning behind it. He’s
not just wearing it to make a statement, but he’s
thoughtful and calculated in why he wants to
wear it, and there’s no one better than Kobe to
make this statement.”
Just as Avar and Luedecke learned in building the
Hyperdunk, the advance product design timeline
that working in Nike’s Innovation Kitchen
offers is quite an advantage when creating high
performance product. They, along with their
pounding he puts his body through after every
82-game season. “When you’re working directly
with the athlete, especially someone like Kobe,
it gives you all the justification you need and the
confidence you need to make a statement like
this,” says Avar. While some players have relied
on low-tops for most of their careers, no one
as prominent, versatile, quick and explosive as
Kobe Bryant has dared to push the boundaries
of height in the realm of signature footwear.
By doing so, Bryant is hoping that people will
become more in tune with the physics of the
game. He also expects players to be quite
surprised at the amount of support provided
by something as minimal and lightweight as the
Zoom Kobe IV. “It’s probably going to
take someone like Kobe to
get this message across,”
Avar says. “Not just team of designers, developers and researchers
by wearing it, but were able to perfect all the millimeters and
because of all the durometers necessary, and they’re already
looking ahead far into the future with the focus
dead set on keeping Kobe’s signature footwear
at the apex of performance. “It’s going to start
with the IV, and certainly we’re going to carry on
with the V, VI, VII and so on,” says Avar. “It’s not
just light for light’s sake or minimal for minimal’s
sake, it’s highly engineered performance
product.” For Luedecke, the arrival to the Kobe
IV’s low-top height through years of research and
development is building up to be a transcendent
moment not only in his career, but perhaps
for all of footwear. “When we had it in Wear
Testing, people said, ‘I don’t know – I don’t know
if I can do this.’ They’re used to [a higher cut.]
They’d say, ‘Yeah I signed up for the test; OK I’ll
wear them. I’ll go 80 percent or 90 percent,’”
Luedecke recalls. “But then by halftime, they
would forget, and then after the game, they came
to us and would say, ‘Wow, my game changes.’
It’s those differences that get me up and I want
to get better than that. I’m already on to the VI
and the VII. I think that’s the things that keep me
going, and we’ve changed perceptions about how
people can play.”
Zoom Kobe IV 63
collector
Guo
or fans in the Unites States, and
especially those living in the Los Angeles area,
finding the latest Kobe kicks and memorabilia can
be as simple as a quick drive to the local sneaker
spot on release day. For Guo Yu, hitting an L.A.
sneaker spot would require considerably more
effort, not to mention quite a bit of money. This
significant obstacle has not stopped him this far,
though, and won’t be stopping him any time soon.
While he may live in Beijing, China, his dedication
to collecting the greatest Kobe memorabilia
would put many local Kobe collectors to shame.
Yu’s interest in Kobe began when Phil Jackson
took over coaching duties for the Los Angeles
Lakers in 1999. Jackson had become a legend
while coaching Michael Jordan with the Chicago
Bulls, and his arrival in L.A. was seen as the
final piece to the Championship puzzle when
combined with Kobe and Shaquille O’Neal. It
was Kobe, though, that immediately caught Yu’s
attention. His attitude towards achieving victory
and his drive to get there were obvious to Yu. “It
is his strength and tenacity that fascinates me so
much,” he says.
64 Zoom Kobe IV
Once Kobe signed to Nike Basketball, Yu began
to take special note of his kicks. He quickly
became a fan and chose the Zoom Flight 2K3,
with Kobe’s No. 8 on the heel, as the first piece
of his collection. It is an exceptionally rare piece,
and one that Kobe never actually even wore.
From that single pair of shoes, he has gone on
to amass roughly 100 pieces of memorabilia,
including many more pairs of shoes, as well as
clothing, basketballs and even bobble heads.
His favorite model in the Kobe line thus far has
been the Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 – specifically
the laser versions. “On first sight, from both
perspectives of visual effect and athletic
performance, I felt they’re excellent,” Yu begins.
“Finally, I got a pair of black and yellow colorway,
which he had worn in a game before, and with his
autograph.”
As mentioned earlier, the logistics of obtaining
new pieces for his collection can be a challenge
at times. Simple geography puts him thousands
of miles from the center of Kobe’s world. “It’s
rather hard because I need to visit websites
in the States or around the world to find my
or Yi Jianlian does, maybe even larger. I think so
many Chinese fans would be influenced by his
basketball skill and attitude towards this game.”
In 2007, Nike created a special exhibit of Kobe
memorabilia in their Nike 706 space in Beijing.
Nike borrowed many pieces of Yu’s amazing
collection to be part of this exhibit, which Kobe
himself visited on one of his trips to China. This
visit presented Yu an opportunity to finally meet
Kobe. Knowing the chance would come, Yu
“prepared a pair of lace buckles of platinum inlaid
with diamonds and shaped in Chinese ‘Ruyi.’
They were made by order by a friend in Hong
Kong. I gave them to Kobe in Nike 706 as a gift,
and I think they represented the best wishes
to him from us Chinese fans.” The most prized
piece of his collection also has a connection
to this meeting. Not only did Kobe receive a
gift, Yu received one from Kobe as well. “Kobe
presented me a Zoom Kobe II Team USA 2007
World Championship edition. He signed his name
on both shoes, and they became my favorite
piece of my collection.”
Not many basketball players can inspire fans
half-way around the world to do as much as
watch their games. Even fewer can inspire fans to
become passionate collectors, who seek out the
knowledge and rare pieces of memorabilia like
Yu has accumulated. And maybe only one player
Words by Zac Dubasik can inspire an entire continent to take an interest
Photos courtesy of Nike in a sport the way Kobe has. It’s no wonder that
Kobe has become that player for Guo Yu.
desired pieces,” he says. “But all these difficulties
can’t block my devotions and interests of new
products about him.” With many shoes still on
his list of wants, he has no plans on letting the
distance stop him now.
Yu doesn’t let the distance keep him from
watching Kobe’s games either. “I will try not to
miss a single one,” he says. He was especially
impressed with Kobe’s desire to play in last year’s
NBA All-Star Game and the Olympics, despite
having nagging injuries. No matter where he is,
Yu keeps his attention on the Lakers, knowing
Kobe will always be giving his best effort. While
he watched the Olympic Games on TV, he
was able to catch the warm-up game between
Team USA and Russia just prior to watching the
Olympics in person. “That was the first time I
went to a stadium and watched Kobe play live,”
Yu says. “That’s so cool.”
Kobe is having a massive impact on basketball in
China. The sport is growing rapidly, and Yu sees
Kobe playing a large part in the process. “Right
now, Kobe has a fan base as large as Yao Ming
Zoom Kobe IV 65
mentu
kobe
Tr aining For Greatness
obe Bryant’s popularity in China has not only
increasingly risen over the past few years because
of his on-court performance for the Los Angeles
Lakers, but also because there is now an astounding
300 million people who play basketball in the nation,
making for quite a large fan base. Kobe’s passion
for the game, his well documented commitment to
training and preparation and his three championship
rings have all rightfully earned him a great deal of
respect throughout the Asia region, where more
and more people are paying close attention to
the NBA season. This past year, Nike and Kobe
Bryant teamed up to share Kobe’s penchant for
preparedness with China’s players as they launched
an intensive basketball training reality TV program on
CCTV called Kobe Mentu. After hundreds of players
from Shenyang, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai
competed for a spot within the program, thirty of the
country’s most skilled and up and coming basketball
players were chosen to compete against each other
for a chance to come out on top as one of the nation’s
elite players.
As the top thirty players traveled to Beijing, they
competed in a series of drills and scrimmages while
living together in a team house. They were split into
groups and matched with American and Chinese
coaches and trainers, who were immediately
demanding of their attention and efforts. “They were
focus[ed] on fundamental skills, such as the shooting
drills and physical training,” says Kobe Mentu player
Chu Wen Ho. “The ways for physical training I think
66 Zoom Kobe IV
particular instance, a few players cut corners
and didn’t touch the baseline while running a
suicide, pushing Kobe to call the group together
for a lesson on the importance of hard work and
completing every drill properly. He told them
that one day of hard work won’t make you an
NBA player, and that it takes focus and effort
every day to get better and realize your potential.
“I like his charisma and the spirit of never giving
up,” says Kobe Mentu player Cao Yan.
For Yan, the journey he faced after the Kobe
Mentu program proved to be as trying and
difficult as his time on the court, as the 16 year-
old was diagnosed with Spina Bifida, a condition
in which the spine doesn’t completely develop.
As a result, Cao Yan underwent a series of
medical visits as he withstood extreme pain
Words by Nick DePaula
Photos courtesy of Nike
along the right side of his body. Though the Kobe
Mentu program had already ended, Kobe heard
about Yan’s condition and immediately reached
out to help. It was a time Cao will never forget
and is extremely grateful for. “The first time I
got the news it was in July, I will never forget it,”
says Yan. “At that time, I felt I was the luckiest
one in the world.” With Kobe’s help, Cao was
introduced to Dr. David Skaggs, a renowned
[are] scientific. Local coaches are not very good at pediatric orthopedic spinal surgeon from Los
these methods. There are many training methods Angeles who agreed to meet with Yan and help
that we don’t have in China, for example, physical him with his condition. Rather than undergo
training in a swimming pool. Also, they pay attention surgery, a procedure that may have limited his
to teamwork. If one player made a mistake, the ability to play basketball in the future, Dr. Skaggs
whole group would be ‘punished.’” The coaches suggested fitting Cao with a brace that would
never let up, pushing the ballers to their limits while help to correct his condition and require as much
stressing togetherness and sportsmanship. As the as six months of rest and rehabilitation. Most
program progressed, six players were cut, and importantly to Cao, the doctors fully believe that
the top twenty-four Kobe Mentu players traveled Yan will be able to continue playing basketball
together to Los Angeles to train under the guidance once he fully recovers.
of Kobe Bryant himself. While the players were
brought together to LA to compete against each The Kobe Mentu program was intended to
other, as Bryant would select the final sixteen Kobe provide China’s top basketball players with the
Mentu players, they each played with a sense of opportunity to not only improve their games,
honor and individual poise throughout. “I didn’t think but to also learn more about themselves and the
too much about competition, because for me it’s training that a dominant player like Kobe Bryant
more significant to try my best,” says Kobe Mentu goes through every day. After the conclusion
player Zheng Hang San. of the program, the lessons of hard work and
teamwork truly stuck with each player, and they
The program aimed to provide players with not only all became friends and still keep in touch. “It’s not
a foundation of basketball skills and fundamentals an easy game, but the fact is that, we got along
to help improve their game, but also a new outlook really well and became good friends after the
on training and preparation to help improve their program,” says Cao Yan. In learning about the
conditioning and strength. “The message I wanted game of basketball firsthand from Kobe Bryant,
to send is, ‘You can be better than what you even they also learned more about his character and
thought you could be,” says Bryant. “So when you approach to the game. For Cao Yan, he was
think you are working hard, you can actually work able to learn about Kobe’s more giving side
harder than that. You have to push yourself to that after fighting through his medical scare. “I really
point.” As the players took to the court, Kobe made think he’s a good guy who loves to give others a
it immediately clear that each player would practice hand,” says Yan. “I like his devotion in games and
with pride and not short change themselves. On one aggressive defense.”
Zoom Kobe IV 67