Brendan Dunne 
The already powerful range of adidas Basketball signature sneakers will get even deeper this month with the arrival of John Wall’s adidas J Wall 1 sneaker. The pair couldn’t come at a better time – Wall just came off his best year yet in the NBA, one in which he proved his worth to the Washington Wizards franchise by leading them to their first playoff series win since 2005. He also put in some work with Team USA over the summer, and while he missed the final cut for the team, popular opinion certainly declared him worthy. Clearly the evidence shows that John Wall is ready to step into the signature sneaker arena. adidas Basketball is ready too.
John Wall actually flirted with signature shoes in the past – he had a few models to his name as a Reebok athlete before he made the switch to the Three Stripes. With that switch he was linked up with the then-new adidas Crazyquick line, where Wall would remain while his next signature offering incubated. That process is complete, and the model is ready for a retail release on October 31st. Ahead of that debut, Sneaker News got the chance to chat with Robbie Fuller and and Jack Gray from adidas Basketball to talk about the design cues, personal insights, and technology innovations that informed John Wall’s upcoming adidas sig debut. Continue reading to get some behind-the-scenes info on the adidas J Wall 1 and wait with us for the shoe’s NBA debut later this fall.
The adidas J Wall 1 from adidas Basketball will launch globally on October 31st, 2014 for $115.
Sneaker News: John Wall is an interesting case since he had a signature model previously with Reebok. Going into his first adidas shoe, did you have to be careful not to tread the same territory?
Robbie Fuller: We didn’t spend too much time on what had happened before. Obviously we were aware of it, but I think we had new content. That’s the best part about Wall is that he’s always on to the next thing. He had new things that he had in his closet – that provided us with some really fresh content so that we weren’t focused on the past. We were focused on the now and what he wants to be about with this whole legacy of signature products for him.
Jack Gray: We also had the benefit of not starting with a signature model right away. We thought it was important to reset and find out who he is as a player and as a person – that’s why we put him in the Crazyquick. We thought that was the right platform for him and we took a lot of learning from that. I think that was really important for us. Everything that we do here at adidas is about working with the athlete, so we didn’t want to look at the past, we wanted to look at what we have in our future and start off a narrative about Quick. That was definitely something that resonated with him and something that was kept in mind with this model.
SN: Were you able to use the time that he spent in the Crazyquick as a trial to find out what worked and didn’t work for him when building the J Wall 1?
RF: Definitely. In terms of the Crazyquick and him having a breakout season, every time we would meet with him we would be inspired by the things that were working well in the shoe. For instance, in the new shoe you’ll see there’s a full length FITFRAME. We spent some time with our athlete services team and with his equipment manager and noticed that even on his Crazyquick PE we had extended the plate all the way to the front to add a little bit more control in the forefoot. We incorporated that same learning into the J Wall 1, so you’ll see a full length FITFRAME to provide that same stability, which was straight from the feedback he gave us.
SN: Was John Wall hesitant to get away from a shoe that he’d been so successful in? Or was he ready to jump right into it and get his name on a shoe?
RF: I think he was excited about having a chance to be there from the ground up. Like Jack mentioned, we had been working on the Crazyquick for a while and we felt that was a great chance for him to test-drive that system and see how we could maximize it, and I think it worked out well. He was super-excited and he knew he wasn’t going to walk away from that completely, but that he was going to take over some of the things that were working well him him on the court. But he would also get to incorporate some of his style and his preferences into the shoe. You can see that through a lot of the detailing and the materialization of the J Wall 1.
Continue reading for background info and design details on specific parts of the upcoming adidas J Wall 1.
On the shoe’s minimalist design and its connection to John Wall’s personal style choices:
“It’s about the idea of the put together. Things are more simple and not so graphic on purpose, because if he’s going to wear something really graphic and bold for his shirt, or for a pair of shorts, he wants the shoes to be a complement to that. There are other models where the shoes would kind of be the headline and he’d want to put that together with pieces that are a bit more subtle. There’s a conversation between the footwear and apparel that every kid has in
the morning when they get dressed – you try to make sure the outfit is right and that it works together. Just a couple of weeks ago we were already talking about the Wall 2 and there are things that he wants to match with his uniform, but even when he wants to match his uniform there are things that are a bit funkier in terms of style components. He wants there to be a little nod to the things that set his outfits apart.”
On the graphic outsole and John Wall’s coast-to-coast closet:
“One of the first things is just how simple the shoe is. It’s not a lot of pieces and it’s all textile. When we met with Wall we noticed that a lot of the things that he was wearing and that he was into weren’t complex in terms of the parts, but they had a lot of depth in terms of materials. We made sure to incorporate quite a bit of that into the shoe. And if you look at the bottom of the shoe, when you put the left and the right shoe together it makes a US map, that came from us noticing that he wasn’t strictly regional. He wasn’t just the I-95 guy or
he didn’t just focus on products from the West Coast, he had a bit of everything in his closet. What we took from that was the connection between his style of play being East Coast/West Coast, side to side, and how goes to all these cities throughout the NBA season and picks things up from them. The idea has to do with giving style and getting style and how he’s kind of a fusion of everything that’s going on all over the US.”
On building out the John Wall line from the logo to the upcoming apparel collection:
“We started the whole design process together about 18 months out and probably the biggest thing that influenced us was the logo. That was the first thing that we started with – the process of creating that logo and what it represented with the J and the W, which were really important to him because of his father, John Wall Sr. We wanted a way to bring those two together and also tell the story of the crossover. If you look at the logo you also get the sense of it being a
net, there are all these hidden meanings with that. When we went out to meet with him on the logo we went at it as an apparel, graphics, color, and footwear design team – one big team. We wanted to do it from the ground up and not just focus on the shoe because he is that guy that is all about ‘the put together’. He wanted everything to be a collection. You’ll notice that the apparel line isn’t very big to start out with, but the focus is on key silhouettes and detailing.”
On the new ADIPRENE PLUS system that the adidas J Wall 1 uses:
“It’s awesome that we have all these technologies and that we’re continuing to expand what we can offer. The athletes can sit with us and work through to talk about things they’ve tried and played in and things that they’re interested in working in for the model. We know he played well in the Crazyquick, he told us he played well, and we saw the numbers. If you look at the bottom of his shoe you can see that there are some grooves that add flexibility to the tooling that are carried over from the Crazyquick. In terms of the foam you have ADIPRENE and you have ADIPRENE PLUS. Just for some education: ADIPRENE is a material that absorbs energy and ADIPRENE PLUS is a material that limits energy loss – it makes sure you maximize as much
energy possible. We saw that PLUS was the perfect material to run all the way through the shoe based on all the time he’s spending on the court on the forefoot. ADIPRENE PLUS also allows you to sculpt the tooling in a way that maximizes torsion in the midfoot. That’s one of the key drivers that helps you to be quick on the court. So for the outsole we took cues from the Crazyquick and for the midsole this is the first time ever for that full-length ADIPRENE PLUS experience. That provides an energetic feel all the way from heel to toe. It was all about learning from how in the first Crazyquick he preferred to have the plate further forward to add some stability. We were able to bring those together to create this tuned tech platform for him.”
