{"id":460566,"date":"2015-08-17T08:15:58","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T12:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/?p=460566"},"modified":"2022-09-17T14:16:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T19:16:45","slug":"interview-nike-basketball-design-director-leo-chang-details-the-hyperdunk-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/interview-nike-basketball-design-director-leo-chang-details-the-hyperdunk-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview \/\/ Nike Basketball Design Director Leo Chang Details The Hyperdunk 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
words & interview \/\/ Nick DePaula<\/strong><\/p>\n
When the original Hyperdunk launched in 2008, the shoe marked a new era in many ways. It weighed just 13.0 ounces, which at the time Nike’s CEO Mark Parker said was the lightest basketball shoe to date. (I remember a couple sneakers listed on Eastbay at a shade under 13 ounces before then, but who’s counting, right?) These were real light<\/em>, even with an all-new high cut silhouette that was new to hoops footwear. They also incorporated Nike’s new Flywire technology, an upper panel simply made of plastic and fabric strands that mostly looked really cool, but also became a marketing dream for the company across all categories. The shoe single-handedly moved the industry towards a focus on lighter weights, with synthetic materials a new focus and leathers a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
Nike was so damn confident in the shoe that they even invited media to their sprawling Beaverton, Oregon campus during the summer of 2008 for a detailed walkthrough of the model’s design and development process, along with a “media weartest” of the shoe. Every single brand holds media run events now — but it was unheard of to that point — as sneaker blogs weren’t yet an established presence then and brands were reluctant to host a real-time on-court feedback session. They’d rather just tell you how great the shoes were and have writers relay those claims in their stories.<\/p>\n
I’ll never forget the then-head of Nike Basketball turning to us after our interview and saying, “I can talk these up all day long, but what better way to judge them than to lace them up yourselves and give them a run?”<\/p>\n
So that’s exactly what we did. With Nike execs and Kobe Bryant himself standing right on the sideline watching us.<\/p>\n
As expected, the shoe was an absolute beast, and it featured a combination of what Nike loved to call “lightweight containment” that was entirely new to the game. In the mid-2000s, shoes were beginning to get clunky as hell (see: Shox Bomber), and the Hyperdunk shifted the industry completely away from the two ever-present styles at the time: overly retro-driven models like the Air Force 25 and overly-complex mechanical cushioning setups like the many full-length Shox bricks and adidas’ $250 “computer shoe”, the adidas 1, which quite literally bricked.<\/p>\n
“You’ve been with us for the journey, and we always talk about the Hyperdunk in 2008 being a defining moment for us and a new era for innovation in basketball,” Nike Basketball Design Director Leo Chang told me last week. “Before, it was always a leather or a synthetic leather upper on a crazy innovative bottom. The explosion in innovation throughout the whole shoe started with the Hyperdunk in 2008.”<\/p>\n
Each year since, the Hyperdunk has become Nike Basketball’s marquee team franchise model, providing players of all sizes with an all-around product that looks to offer up a blend of protection, versatility, traction and cushioning. The newest version, the Hyperdunk 2015, looks to combine the best of each model. There’s the protective higher cut, the midfoot support wedge, tried and true herringbone traction, and most importantly — in my opinion — a return to both heel and forefoot Zoom Air.<\/p>\n
To hear all about the latest addition to the editions, I recently caught up with Leo Chang for a full breakdown of the new Hyperdunk 2015.<\/a><\/p>\n