Aaron Hope 
Michael Jordan is widely considered as the greatest basketball player of all time, but his entrance into the NBA wasn’t equally celebrated. During MJ’s rookie year, fellow Eastern Conference guard Isiah Thomas sought to freeze Jordan out of the 1985 NBA All Star Game and the league itself fined Mike for every game he wore the grounbreaking Air Jordan 1. Neither attempt succeeded, of course, and the league’s punishment only served to draw more attention to the first of a long line of brilliant sneakers.
That’s the premise behind the Air Jordan 1 Retro High ‘Banned’, a sneaker we’ve seen change over time since its initial preview back in August 2010. That first pair featured black ‘X’s over the tongue tag and ankle Wings logo, but only the former remains. We can see in these new photos that the images we showed you in October offer a better approximation of the tumbled leather side panels, but even those failed to capture this latest look’s depiction of the ‘NIKE AIR’ tongue tags and detailed sockliner. The former is a nice surprise and the latter includes a variety of text reminders plus a smattering of tiny ‘x’ stitches to finish the theme. Also of note is that these pictures show a standard Jordan Brand box where we’d been expecting a special package that also utilized the X’d out motif. Click through for more shots, let us know if this latest version is the best so far and stick with Sneaker News for updates on a ‘Banned’ AJ1 release. via ChetLsworth on NT
Air Jordan 1 Retro High
Black/Varsity Red-White
432001-001
