In a basketball scoreboards feature, we take a look at the two biggest players in the NBA and their fancy footwear!
Just like any other commercialized sport, NBA is a highly lucrative industry for a great basketball player. And with great money, comes great…shoes! Shoes are the weapon for every athlete in every sport. Perhaps this is even more true for a basketball athlete (besides, of course, a marathon runner!) because a basketball player has to be completely comfortable in his shoes for him to execute precise the jumps and cuts. The biggest players in the NBA (who we see most on the basketball scoreboards!) like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James realize their shoes’ importance, which is why they have created a new breed of shoes and have partnered a shoe company to produce them. Now let’s take a look at what makes their shoes so special for them.
1 – Kobe Bryant, Nike Zoom Kobe VI – the VI follows most of the design specs and technologies used from the IV which was specifically built to cater for Kobe’s need for speed. The only difference is that the leather has been thickened. He has several official signature shoes such as the Nike Zoom Kobe, the Nike Kobe Huarache 2k series, the Hypermax, the Hyperdunk, Adidas Kobe Retro Crazy and various others. He is now on to the 6th edition of the series simply known as Nike Zoom Kobe VI. He wore the first edition during the 2005-06 season. The second during the 2006-07 season, the third during the 2007-08 season and now the sixth. However, during the Beijing Olympics he wore the Nike Hyperdunk, which was the national footwear for team USA in the Olympics. The Nike Zoom Kobe IV integrates the flywire upper, a molded collar and an external heel counter for max support and to keep the foot from sliding along the footbed. Other than that, the heel Zoom Air unit, a rigidity plate and LunarLite foam provides cushion to the feet at all the right places.
2 – Lebron James, Air Max Lebron VIII (8) – created in collaboration with Nike, Lebron James is starting this year’s season (2010-11) with style and maximum comfort. This shoe has been created after paying special attention to Lebron James’s need for maximum support and cushioning during jumps and cuts. Keeping his needs in mind, Nike designed and created a shoe which infuses the Flywire and Max Air sole technologies. The shoe features a leather upper embedded with Flywire for support all around the shoe. While on the other hand, the bottom or the sole of the shoe is created by embedding a full length Max Air (360 degrees) unit into a Phylon midsole for maximum possible cushioning to the soles of the feet. In prior seasons he wore different editions of the same series. In the 2005-06 season, he wore the Nike Zoom Lebron III; in 2006-07, he sported the Lebron IV; in 2007-08 the Lebron V; in 2008-09 the Lebron VI; in the 2009 playoffs the Nike Zoom Soldier III and in 2009-10 the Lebron VII.
For more information on these two players, go to:
www.nba.com,
en.wikipedia.org