Aaron Kr. 
Inside the Nike Basketball design studios, performance is everything. Every move and decision is made with maximum performance in mind, including the actual visual look of the shoes created within. The pursuit of ultimate functionality determines not only how a shoe performs and feels on your foot, but in many cases, it also dictates a lot of the aesthetic choices as well. Once the shoe has been fully developed and engineered to it’s full potential, it’s time for the color, graphics and materials team to further bring the products to life with a variety of color splashes and palettes to help to tell certain stories and give some additional identity to each colorway.
Yesterday, in part 1 of our Nike Basketball Elite Series interview with Nike Bball designers Jason Petrie and Leo Chang, we got the full lowdown on the technical updates made to each of the three models to upgrade from their original forms into this super premium postseason-inspired collection. Now we take a deeper look at why the Elite Series looks the way it does, from its shapes, lines and materials to the various color schemes and the stories behind them. Continue reading for all you wanted to know about the Nike Basketball Elite Series aesthetics and colorways, and be on the look out for the home and away versions of all three models hitting retailers this Saturday, April 28th.
SN: As far as the aesthetics of the Elite Series, the Hyperdunk and Kobe VII stay fairly true to the original form and design, while the LeBron 9 takes on a more radical transformation. What factors led to how much or little the look of the shoes changed along with the Elite upgrades, and how much does one affect the other?
LC: I think a lot. It’s definitely form follows function.
JP: Speaking for the LeBron, the whole reason it changed was because of the materials and benefits we wanted to provide. Otherwise, we could have just slapped carbon fiber in that wing, but it wouldn’t have worked the way we wanted it to work. So that drove everything about the aesthetic. As with all of our shoes at Nike Basketball. I think with the performance characteristics, it has to work first, and I think shoes look best when form follows function and that’s how you get into the aesthetics and that’s how you push things. We’re trying to make the best basketball shoes on the planet and they’re gonna look like what they look like to be those shoes.
LC: Yeah, like a lot of people don’t know that the Flywire patterns that we create are based on the dynamic movements of the foot in basketball. So a lot of people think that it’s just stitched in any random pattern, but those are actually very technical things that we’ve analyzed through years of research in our labs.
SN: So people need to realize that every little detail is considered for performance and nothing just gets thrown in simply because it looks cool?
JP: A detail or a finish might be on there just to tell a story, but everything has to function and work. We pride ourselves on that and we’ll get called out if we put some gimmicky stuff on there.
SN: We’ve seen multiple LeBron 9 Elite colorways leak out, but only the black and white “home/away” versions of the others. Can we expect more colorway options on the way for the Kobe and the Hyperdunk?
LC: Not for the Hyperdunk and the Kobe. The premise between the white and black with the gold hit is – going into the Playoffs, we just wanted to cleanse the palette in some ways. We’ve been going crazy with bright colors everywhere, so let’s go back to the fundamentals of home and away and then the aspirational goal of that gold trophy is why we added the gold Swoosh. So retail versions for those two will just come in black and white.
What you’ll see on court though, is we won’t be able to use the gold hits until the Finals. It’s league rules, so you’ll see players wearing black and white with their team color hits on the Swoosh and laces and stuff, but whoever is in the Finals will get to wear the gold!
SN: While we’re talkin about colorways, we’ve had numerous conversations about nicknames over the years, and while I know you get a kick out of some of the names that come out of the woodwork, I also know that its frustrating when people completely misinterpret the intended inspiration behind the shoe. From now until the end of time, anytime there’s teal and pink on a LeBron shoe, people will call it “South Beach”, but is there any deeper story behind the version that’s being tagged with the South Beach or McFly nicknames right now? Here’s your chance to clear the air.
JP: You know, the nickname thing is awesome, because that just means that people care. I think it’s cool, but it does sort of dilute the story sometimes when you see something like ‘McFly’ that has nothing to do with it, so it starts causing confusion and that’s where I might tweet about it to try to clear it up. Otherwise, I love when people just spin on stuff and come up with the names they do. It may be ridiculous, but it’s cool and it’s fun and it’s the community getting involved, and I think that’s really important. But with something like the P.S. 9, with the colorway that’s kinda in that South Beach palette, it’s Eugene Rogers and Erick Goto and our color and graphics design group. It was something where – when we did the South Beach 8, it was a huge moment and I’ve been hearing constantly, you said you weren’t gonna do South Beach again! And what I said was, we weren’t gonna do the exact same thing.
You’re not gonna see another teal shoe, because that was a moment in time. However, South Beach and the notion of that palette is still relevant. And I’m not saying we’re gonna do that every year, but we were like, how do we go back to South Beach, but in a different way? So we took this Miami Vice spin on it and it was just a wink to the commercial and the journey that he’s been on since he started in Miami. The “descision” and doing the press conference and all that to now, and hopefully eventually celebrating a championship in that city. And the genius about Eugene is that he would never want to do another teal shoe, so it was like, how can we flip it?
LC: We actually call him Eugenius.
JP: Yeah Eugenius is his name. He flipped that grey to get a whole new take on it and even though the colors look similar, there’s actually a different shade of teal and a different shade of pink. It’s more modern and its super current and up to date to keep the story going, and we’re gonna continue to tell it whatever those moments are. It may be South Beach or you may never see South Beach again, but it certainly wasn’t something where we were looking to tell the exact same version of the story. That was the arrival. This is now the celebration of his accomplishments kinda thing.
SN: So you’re okay with the South Beach nickname being tied to it?
JP: Yeah, it’s close enough. It’s just the thing where if you say South Beach, you think teal and pink and I’ve seen people doing Photoshops making it teal and stuff like that. And it looks hot, but that’s doing the same thing and that’s expected. That’s something you won’t see us doing. We try to flip it, push it, move it forward and change the game up, but still have fun with it and that’s exactly what that shoe is. So like I said, don’t stop with the nicknames, but things like ‘Bubblicious’ and that stuff, you’ve just gotta laugh at.
It’s cool though. A few years ago, there was nobody making nicknames up for Nike Basketball shoes, so I’m very proud that our team has taken the shoes to a level where kids are so excited about them enough to talk about it and think about it and have the conversations that lead to those nicknames. Hopefully in the future, we can just do a better job of communicating what those stories are ahead of time so that it doesn’t get out of control like with the LeBron 8 Low ‘Flamingo’ that got dubbed ‘Miami Nights’, which took away from the Miami Nights LeBron 9, which is where the real story was supposed to be focused.
SN: In addition to the home/away and South Beach versions of the LeBron 9 Elite, we’ve also seen a Varsity Maize/Black/Red colorway. Is there any specific story or inspiration behind that color scheme?
JP: We just wanted to push the Heat colors in a new way, and maybe even get the team to rock yellow if they wanted. But ultimately it was just to take a fresh spin on the Miami Heat color palette.
SN: Aside from the ones that we already know about, can we expect any other LeBron 9 Elite colorways to pop up before it’s all said and done?
JP: I can’t really say, and that’s only because those decisions haven’t been made yet to my knowledge. I would assume with special moments will come special products, but I have no idea what we will end up releasing. You know we always love surprises! (laughs)
Huge thanks again to Jason, Leo and the whole Nike Basketball crew. Don’t forget to check out the Elite Series in person when all three models hit stores this weekend.
