TOWARDS the end of his 2016 memoir Shoe Dog, Nike founder Phil Knight was struck by the many coincidences in his life. One in particular jumps out at him.
Knight — and the company that would become Nike — didn’t start out selling their own shoe line. In the ‘60s, they were the US distributors for another company, Onitsuka. The Japanese shoe company was headquartered in Kobe, Japan, a city that became one of Knight’s first stops in his life-changing 1962 backpacking trip around the world. It was there that he presented a pitch to the company that had just released the now-iconic Tiger running shoes.
“The River Jordan. Mystical Kobe, Japan. That first meeting at Onitsuka, pleading with the executives for the right to sell Tigers…” Knight reminisced. “Can this be all a coincidence?”
Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Tiger Woods, of course, are among Nike’s signature athletes.
And now Kobe Bryant, whose own shoe line would become iconic sneakers of their own, is dead.
Bryant didn’t start off wearing Nikes. He first signed on with German shoemaker adidas, wearing the EQT Elevation in his freshman year in the NBA. In his first appearance at an All-Star Weekend in 1998, the brash rookie won the Slam Dunk contest on purple Elevations.
A year later, adidas would debut his first signature shoe, the KB8. This lasted for three iterations.
Then, in 2000, adidas would release the Kobe, a futuristic, solid, Space Shuttle of a sneaker. Its looks were really out there, but nothing compared to its successor, the Kobe Two. Bryant refused to lace 'em up, and in 2002, reportedly paid $8 million to get out of adidas’ clutches.
Many wonder what would have happened if Kobe had stuck with adidas.
In any case, Bryant was snapped up by Nike in June 2003 — just a month after the Swoosh signed up LeBron James for his own line of signature kicks. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that Kobe would be paid $50 million less than LeBron, and had been very, very close to signing a deal with Reebok.
Soon, Bryant would take on a new identity: The Black Mamba. Inspired by a line from Kill Bill Vol. 2, which he watched on cable one sleepless night after the 2005 season, the snake would represent a Kobe who was “no longer a wholesome young athlete,” wrote Kent Babb in an extensive profile for the Washington Post.
“Bryant says he felt free to reveal the darkness that had always lurked inside him,” continued the article.
A new persona meant a brand new logo: a lean, three-point emblem that Nike would slap onto every sneaker that Kobe wore.
Due to various issues, he only got his first signatures, the Zoom Kobe 1, in 2008, but it couldn’t have come at a better year. It was on these shoes that Bryant would go on an 81-point rampage, almost single-handedly pulling the Lakers to victory over the Raptors, 122-104. (To tease a “Protro” re-release of the Nike Zoom Kobe 1, Bryant would post a pic of himself holding up the originals.)

Perhaps to avoid a disastrous repeat of the adidas Kobe Two, the Nike Zoom Kobe 2 became the first of many shoes where Bryant would take a direct hand in design. By the Zoom Kobe 3, Nike designer Eric Avar — who created the distinct silhouettes of the Air Max Penny, the Air Foamposite, the Huarache 2K4, and countless others — would also directly oversee the Kobe line.
“Eric and I both know when we are on to something when the rest of the room gets really uncomfortable,” Bryant said of their partnership back in 2015. “We tend to speak in code, I mean it's code for those who are around. For us, it's just how we talk.”

Azar also had his own thoughts about how he and Bryant communicated. “The great thing about Kobe is that he is so direct, he is so honest. He has a strong point of view, he has a strong voice. (There is) always a very open and collaborative conversation. It is just cool.”
Together, the pair’s intense chemistry would roll out some of the most popular kicks that would grace the NBA courts.
There was the Hyperdunk, the first basketball sneakers to feature Flywire tech, and made famous with a viral ad of the Black Mamba leaping over a moving sports car.
There was the eternal quest for lower, faster, lighter, with astounding silhouettes to match, in the 4s, 5s, and the “snakeskin”-patterned 6s.
There was the Kobe 9, where Kobe had a flash of design inspiration: the addition of nine marks at the back of the sneaker that would represent the nine stitches he’d gotten after his Achilles heel surgery.
The only problem was that it was already very late in the design process. Fortunately, Avar found a way to make it work, and it became one of the 9’s signature trademarks.
The 9 also marked a return to a high-top design, with the “Elite High” variant. But these weren’t just any high-tops. Almost resembling boxing boots, the shoes’ tongues went so high they scraped against shins — and provided an unprecedented level of support that would make this one of the line’s undisputed highs.
The Kobe 11s were the last shoe Bryant wore to an NBA game. On these kicks, he closed his NBA career with a 60-point shootout against the Utah Jazz, and walked away from the game with a kiss of the fingers and a final, succint statement: “Mamba out!”
The Kobe line would go on long after his retirement. There would be enhanced retro re-releases called “Protros” (including a Protro re-release, just this year, of one of his most famous Kobe 5 colorways, the Joker-inspired 'Chaos'). But the spirit of the classic Kobes would continue in a new Nike line, first introduced in 2016 and favored by players like DeMar DeRozan for their lightweight construction.
They were known as Nike Kobe ADs. What was the AD short for? “After death.”
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