I’m writing this entry from a hotel room in Cleveland after an action-packed couple of days hosted by Nike. In case you haven’t kept up with the flurry of tweets and posts across the cool-guy blogosphere or caught news from the established sports media outlets, a select group of people were brought out to Akron, Ohio this past weekend at Nike’s invitation to personally partake in the unveiling of the Nike Air Max LeBron James VII sneaker. I’ll leave it to the sports-centric websites to better explain why else LeBron James is monopolizing news headlines, as well as leave most of the hype and fashion fetish surrounding the sneaker to other blogs, and instead focus on the human component to what I witnessed…
For a company as obsessed with performance and function as Nike is, it always amazes me to see how brilliant a form they always follow through with on just about everything they do. Between all the fanboys, hype, and haters, a person can sometimes lose sight of what Nike is truly about: A passion for sport with an existence founded upon an obsession for helping athletes perform better. The fact that along the way, Nike has also managed to create iconic footwear and apparel, influence popular culture or build a multi-billion dollar global empire, are all byproducts of an ethos founded on making products that help great athletes perform even better. As evidenced again this weekend with the unveiling of the Nike Air Max LeBron James VII sneaker, Nike’s passion for sport and attention to detail regularly culminate in footwear technologies that help revolutionize the game, as well as experiences that reset standards.
The weekend began with a forty-five minute bus ride out to LeBron’s home town of Akron to visit the Ed Davis Community Center. This particular community center is significant because it played a major role in LeBron’s early basketball years and was therefore chosen by him personally as the official setting for a retrospective of his professional career thus far. To help visualize this, Nike assembled an impressive series of museum-like displays linked together through a network of rooms that each highlighted a particular milestone in Lebron’s basketball career. Showcased at the center of each room were shoe samples representing the evolution of the Nike Air Max LeBron James sneaker, which also served to emphasize or underscore each of the milestones on display. Once through all the rooms, we were escorted as a group over to the gym to participate in a global webcast for the unveiling of the latest incarnation of the Nike Air Max LeBron James sneaker - the VII - hosted by Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live and featuring LeBron James and Nike Footwear Designer Jason Petrie. Kenan steadily maintained himself in top form, continuously added impromptu comedic relief to Jason’s technical breakdown of the new shoe. Meanwhile, LeBron James was answering all manner of questions, from personal to professional, from the crowd in attendance and via those emailing in off the webcast. In and of itself, between the retrospect and the Q&A with Lebron James, this would have been a pretty incredible event, but this being put on by Nike, it only served to lay the foundation for what they had planned next.
The next segment of our tour led us a few miles up the road to LeBron James’ High School, Saint Vincent-Saint Mary. Immediately upon arrival the tour group was divided up by gender with the two halves each escorted to the appropriate school locker room. Once through the door, everybody was then presented with a gym locker bearing their name that in turn contained a Saint Vincent-Saint Mary basketball uniform and pair of Nike Air Max LeBron James VII sneakers, both already conveniently sized to fit, as well as a gym bag stuffed with a pair of socks, a towel and some toiletries. With most everyone standing around gawking and caught in a state somewhere between confusion and rapture, Saint Vincent-Saint Mary Basketball Coach Dru Joyce quickly got everyone’s attention by barking out orders to suit up and then continuing on with some pre-game pep talk. (For those of you uninformed reading this, Coach Dru Joyce II personally coached Lebron James from 8 years old or so, all the way up through High School, subsequently earning Saint Vincent-Saint Mary three additional State Championships together with Lebron James. Coach Dru continues as Head Basketball Coach for SVSM and brought home his fourth State Championship this last year for the 2009 Basketball Season.) Whoever’s minds weren’t blown by this point, most surely detonated once Coach Dru escorted a newly suited up group of wannabe, if not quite ready, ball players down the hall and onto the school basketball court to be greeted by Lebron James and a handful of his closest high school ball playing crew for a bit of hoops.
I’m not going to go into detail about what transpired on the court because honestly, my memory of this segment of the Akron experience is mostly a big exciting blur of a good time. I recall Coach Dru drilling us far beyond what even the most fit among us was prepared for, and then after, watching Lebron James dribble circles around everyone until he’d finally decide to end the embarrassment with one of his trademark slam dunks (extra emphasis on the ‘slam’ part). No doubt, very few people get such an up close and personal opportunity to see what it takes to be a world class athlete like Lebron James, and even less get the opportunity to go up against a professional athlete like him first hand. Thanks to an epic weekend by Nike, I’m proud to say I’ve had my chance, and though I won’t lie and say I even led to Lebron breaking a sweat, I will say it was an experience I’ll remember (and discuss) with fondness for many years to come.
It would be easy at this point to discuss what an incredible sneaker the Nike Air Max LeBron James VII is, but the stellar reviews are already in so I won’t repeat most of what’s already been said about them. Suffice to say that the Air Max LeBron James VII is an incredible shoe. It was designed from scratch for one of the best players to ever play the sport, using the latest footwear technologies by the company that paves the way in sport performance. As I found out personally, wearing a pair isn’t going to allow you to suddenly start dunking on King James, but I have no doubt that it’ll step your game up in more ways than one.
A special thanks to Nike and LeBron for the amazing experience.
