Thursday morning - save for the @warrenlotas debacle over the past year - could there be a more controversial sneaker storyline than the Nike x Kobe Bryant estate? Obviously, for this weeks ‘sneake

Thursday morning - save for the @warrenlotas debacle over the past year - could there be a more controversial sneaker storyline than the Nike x Kobe Bryant estate?

Obviously, for this weeks ‘sneaker of the century (of the week)’, we’re gonna go with the Mambacita VI...if you’ve been living under a rock - @vanessabryant herself posted about the fact that they’ve been leaking, well before their supposed release date. News travels fast, as I had a number of folks keeping me up to date on breaking news through my DMs - @veenomous , @michaelmarteen , and @jensen__9 sent me details as it was all unfolding and I gotta say...quite the clusterfuck. I got a lot of comments and discussions regarding how slimy it all feels...

On my story - I wasn’t asking if the shoes in question were ‘real’ as I do believe they are a ‘real’ Nike product - the question stems from the idea that if no one approves their release, how can they exist (in theory) in an ‘authentic only’ marketplace? Logically it’s a hurdle for me. Harken back to my @jbalvin x Jordan 1 post where the shoes were selling on @stockx for thousands of dollars WELL before they were even finalized.

Let’s be real for a minute, though. If a ‘legit’ retailer (ie: @footpatrol_ldn ) offered these to you for retail well before release date - you’d probably be pretty happy to have them. I know I would be. Because I know that if it wasn’t me - it’d just be someone else. Not sure if I’d post to social media, though (yet).

Again, this is the perfect chance for me to push the idea of ‘pre-orders’ - I couldn’t imagine a better line than the Kobe line to do this with. Fans would get the shoes (eventually), @nike wouldn’t have to look like slimeballs for purposefully limiting product, @stockx would be used for what it was likely meant for, and @vanessabryant and the Kobe estate would be happy to see ‘all of his real fans’ able to purchase. Was this part of the discussion before the deal was nixed? If so, how did this idea get nixed? Is it because sneakerheads cannot accept the fact that they don’t get instant gratification with pre-orders? I suppose we will never know....