Month: August 2016

The Olympics: A time of awe-inspiring athletic feats. A time of great personal and national triumphs. A time of excellent marketing and fire sneaker releases.

You know that every time the Olympics come around, you’re going to get absolutely slammed with marketing. TV ads. “Official ____ Of The USA Olympic Team” packaging. Shoes inspired by the athletes, the logos, the medals, and anything else that’s marketable at the Olympic Games.

There’s a lot of dope stuff from many a brand this year, like Nike’s Olympic pack (which we wrote about a few weeks back), but Adidas will be taking home the gold medal for “best Olympic sneakers” this year when it’s all said and done. read more

If you’ve even minimally paid attention to street culture over the last decade-plus, the name Kaws should resonate with you. The art and graffiti legend has created many a memorable piece, be it on a canvas or an bus shelter ad, and has collaborated with everyone from Bape to Medicom to Undercover to Supreme to Hennessy, and even designed the Moon Man award for the MTV VMA’s in 2009. He’s always got his hands in something, and can always be counted on to create something dope. read more

Nike Basketball used to be the dopest thing out.

The colorways were creative and inspiring (Lebron South Beach, KD Aunt Pearl, Kobe Mambacurial to name a few). Everything except the most widely available general releases would blow off the shelves, and sneakerheads around the world had piles and piles of orange Nike boxes stacked up high in their rooms. Yeah, Nike Basketball was the best.

But around the release of the LeBron 11 and the KD 7, a strange thing started happening: Nike Basketball releases (even the hyped ones) were sitting. Resell prices plummeted. You could get grails like Big Bang Lebron 9’s for a fraction of what they used to cost, as most of their owners were frantically trying to unload them. read more

Damn Under Armour … back at it again with the gag-inducing designs.

That was my first thought when I saw the Curry 2 Luxe, Under Armour’s first real attempt at a lifestyle shoe design. I’ll admit: at first, it makes sense. The most popular player in the NBA, fresh off another MVP season (yeah, he lost in the finals, but his star is still shining brightly … ask any kid on your block) gets a lifestyle shoe that his fans can rock off the court. Doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, right? read more

The NMD Judgement day is almost upon us.

On August 18th, Adidas will be releasing 19 (yeah, that’s right … 19. Can you believe it?) colorways of their wildly popular NMD silhouette. Both the original NMD R1 and the new NMD XR1 will be dropping in men’s and women’s … so there’s literally something for everyone.

With that much heat dropping on one day, we thought it would be only right to break it down into a top 3, and after several hours of hand-wringing, head-scratching, and careful thought, we were able to do just that. Here’s our 3 favorite NMD’s from this massive restock. read more