So…those Ja 1’s…
I tried to think back to other *first* signature shoes and can’t say that I’m all that impressed with the vast majority of *first* signature shoes (that have dropped since like 2001). I could be wrong, but when I saw that Ja 1 it made me think of all of the *swoosh-heavy initial signatures that Nike has dropped since like 2001.
IMO, the only time initial *sig designs were really crazy, IMO, were in the mid-to-late 90’s when everyone and their mother had a *wild* first sig with Nike - I’m thinking Rodman, Barkley, Garnett, Kidd, Penny’s Foamposite, Timmy Hardaway, Pippen, Barkley, Vince Carter, GP, Deion Sanders…hell…even Ken Griffey Jr.’s and Hideo Nomo’s sig’s were wild.
As for the post 2001 era of sneaker design…
Lebron 1’s were meh.
Kobe 1’s were meh.
KD 1’s were super meh.
Kyrie 1’s were meh.
PG 1’s were meh.
Freak 1’s were interesting to me as they had a *backward* swoosh, but still relatively meh.
Even considering the whole Jordan line - the Jordan 1 is by far the most conservative. (Yeah yeah I know they’re classics but looking at them through the lens of history they’re not all that much different than a Dunk - or even the Air Ship)
One thing about all of those sigs mentioned above - they seemed to be built *around* the swoosh. And, as we’ve seen, for most of these signature lines, the swoosh took a backseat on subsequent revisions.
All that to say: we should probably expect Nike to take a conservative approach with their signature athletes on the first iteration. Once it’s thoroughly established that each athlete is a *Nike* athlete, we can probably expect spicier designs.