All posts with the 'Nike' tag appear below.
Hall, Hunter in Swingman Remix; New Catalog Images
Since I wrote about the upcoming Nike Air Swingman Remix last week (click here for that post), two more players have been spotted wearing the Ken Griffey Jr. signature shoe:
(AP Photo / Morry Gash, Gus Ruelas)
Whether these are PE’s or not has yet to be seen, but with both Bill Hall and Torii Hunter lacing them up, my theory that Griffey is hand-picking the players who are wearing them is looking even more accurate.
NFL Training Camp Cleats: LenDale, Peterson, Moss, and Smoot
LenDale White broke out this new Nike model in Titans camp yesterday… At first I thought that they might be an unreleased model (a la Shawne Merriman and Stephen Jackson in ‘07), but as reader jb pointed out, they’re the Nike Throw Back, a Dick’s Sporting Goods exclusive. LenDale’s custom pair above has Titans colors, a different midsole (the GR version has the Huarache midsole), and a TD outsole.
(Photo by AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Kevin Durant, Nike Unveil New Signature Shoe
Kevin Durant and Nike recently unveiled the Kevin Durant 1, KD’s first signature shoe, in Taiwan. They’ll feature Zoom Air cushioning and simple upper design (bordering on uninspired) with patent leather accents. While this black pair could probably use some white or yellow in the midsole, the white versions looks promising. Photos via kenlu.net… more pics after the jump.
Red Sox-Yankees Weekend Series Cleats
Sox-Yankees games are great for many reasons, but one of the best things about them is that they’re all photographed like it’s the World Series, making for some great footwear shots. Here’s a couple good views of some recent cleats:
Here’s a better shot of the new David Ortiz signature shoe… he wore these during his recent rehab assignment, but they made their MLB debut this weekend. I’m guessing Reebok hasn’t made him a black version yet; he wore his black ‘08 sigs on Saturday.
(Photo by AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
UPDATE: This model is now available at Eastbay (thanks to rbkguy for pointing this out). It’s called the Big Papi 2M Mid II, and the product image can be seen here.
No Pony’s for Moss; Other NFL Kicks
Not too many custom cleats can be expected from the first week of training camp, but here’s the best of them:
Tom Brady broke out a new pair of Super Bads with a turf midsole and a Shark cleat pattern (similar to the midsole/outsole that he’s worn the past few years), but the really interesting thing in this photo is the absence of Randy Moss’ Pony signature cleats. Moss wore those Super Bad I’s, a Reebok model, and Super Bad II’s last year, but after all the hype about him signing with Pony, I’m surprised that he didn’t break out the new PE’s at camp (and I can’t imagine the folks at Pony are too happy). Thanks to Greg Riffenburgh for the photo.
(Photo by Damian Strohmeyer/SI)
Albert Pujols Air Max MVP Player Exclusives
As promised, I finished up my renderings of Albert Pujols’ home and All-Star versions of his Max MVP PE’s. For whatever reason, Albert must prefer the Zoom heel cage to the Max Air unit in the MVP, but they look great regardless. The All-Star version appears above, and the home version appears below.
You’ll be seeing these and many others in the PE Gallery within the next few weeks.
Team USA Basketball Photos / New Melo M5 Hits Practice Court
With Team USA practicing in Las Vegas in preparation for the Olympics, a couple footwear stories have developed — the main one being the conspiracy theory over whether Coach K’s block of Dwight Howard’s adidas kicks in the above photo was intentional or not. Regardless, here’s the breakdown of what everyone’s been wearing, and photos of Melo’s new M5 model are also shown after the jump…
(Photo by Taryn Simon/Nike)
NFL Camps Open Up; Taylor & Portis PE’s
With training camps starting to open up, NFL PE’s will start getting some coverage on PlayerExclusive.com. I’ll be posting pics and doing renderings of NFL kicks through the end of the season, and our first PE sightings come from Redskins camps…
It didn’t take long for Jason Taylor to get some Redskins-colored Jordan III Retro PE’s. They look like they have a molded TD outsole instead of the detatchable cleats offered on the retail version… I’m looking forward to seeing some better quality pics of these to see what else they have. Unfortunately, he’ll either have to get a black version or spat these up with black tape for the season since Washington wears black cleats.
(Photo by AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Player Exclusive Gallery; New Matt Holliday PE
If you’ve visited the site over the past few days, you may have noticed the addition of the “PlayerExclusive.com PE Gallery: Coming Soon” graphic at the top of this page. The gallery isn’t up and running quite yet, but here’s the deal: One of my main goals for this site (beyond following the daily beat on PE’s) is to create an extensive visual collection of custom footwear from each sport. Much of this will hopefully be accomplished through PE close-up photos, but since it’s often difficult to obtain close-up shots for many models out there, I’ll be doing quite a bit of Photoshopping.
If you check out the gallery link now, you’ll see a few of my early renderings from the ‘08 baseball season. Even though I’ve only focused on Nike thus far (they’re the easiest to find photos to work from), I will definitely be doing all the major brands in the future. Here’s an example of one of my most recent renderings:
The above graphic is based on Matt Holliday’s latest Air Max MVP PE, as seen below:
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
I probably won’t be launching the gallery until the beginning of August (I’d like to get at least 20-30 models in there before I open it up), but in the meantime I’ll be sharing more renderings in my daily posts. I’ll be doing Albert Pujols’ latest Max MVP PE’s next, and Holliday’s All-Star PE’s (which, due to the pinstripes, will likely be ridiculously difficult to do) are on deck.
If you have any suggestions of what Nike models you’d like to see in the future, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
Nike Air Swingman Remix PE’s
In the next few weeks, I’ll be mixing it up between new footwear coverage and some recaps of the first-half cleats from the ‘08 MLB season. One of the best stories to develop this year has been the return of the Ken Griffey Jr. signature shoe.
For the past few seasons, Griffey has worn PE’s of his older signature models on newer Nike midsoles as well as a few PE’s of non-signature shoes. They looked great, but as one of baseball’s greatest enduring stars, it was surprising to see Griffey go without a new signature cleat since 2004. This year, Nike decided to change that with the Air Swingman Remix:
While it’s technically not a completely “new” shoe (it combines the iconic designs of the Griffey 1 and Griffey 2), this is clearly one of the most exciting cleats that we’ve seen in years. They feature 20 “dots” on the upper to commemorate Junior’s 20 years in the league, a Swingman logo embossed into the medial side in addition to the logo on the Griffey 2-inspired heel, and a few other design elements that just make these look amazing (pics via NT’s gotta be tha shoes). The cement pattern on the above shoe is part of the PE — it won’t be on the retail version. The pictured model is shown on Junior below:
(AP Photo/Al Behrman)
Griffey has worn a few other colorways of these this year (including black/red, black/white/silver, and all black pairs), but most of these should be available for purchase this fall (see page 3 of the ‘09 catalog updates here). A bizarre thing has happened with this signature shoe, however — other MLB players are getting player exclusives of them. Nike might be doing this to honor Griffey in his 600 HR milestone year (or they might just be pushing these hard for their upcoming release). My guess is that the players wearing them have been hand-selected by Junior himself. Griffey has often spoken out on the lack of African-Americans in baseball, so it would make sense that he’d have Nike send PE’s to Jimmy Rollins, Orlando Hudson, and Carl Crawford…
Adidas
Nike
Easton
Reebok
Jordan
Under Armour