Hey Chicago!
As I mentioned last week, I had the opportunity to go to New York to check out some of the new shoes coming from Nike Inc., Converse, and Jordan brand, as well as the new team uniforms that Team USA will be showcasing at the World Basketball Festival in August.
When the design team came back to the US, they set out to develop a shoe that was stable and protective enough for a basketball player but was light and breathable like a running shoe. So that's what Nike did with the Zoom Hyperfuse. They created a shoe that was very lightweight, breathable but also durable enough to be used outdoors as well as indoors. In drawing inspiration from their running shoe lines, Nike utilized technology in the mesh body of the shoe and incorporated it into the Zoom Hyperfuse construction. The two most important components of running shoes are the weight and the breathability and the main factor in these aspects are the mesh materials used in the body of the shoe. Running shoes are all about lightweight material and breathability so what better place to look than there.
The composite construction that was used for the Zoom Hyperfuse is something Nike has never used before in a basketball shoe. The composite construction takes 3 layers, a very strong stability layer, a breathable mesh layer and and a durable outer skin layer and fuses them together with heat and pressure. There is very little cut and sewn areas in the whole shoe, it's pretty much one big piece of very lightweight material.
The construction of the shoe itself is an amazing piece of design work but what is really pretty crazy are the colors that they have been able to come up with. The materials and technology they are using in the Zoom Hyperfuse allow them to use several different colors that were not available in the past on basketball shoes.
I don't play a lot of basketball so I don't wear a lot of basketball shoes. I'm used to wearing running shoes and usually when I put a pair of basketball shoes on, they feel really big, heavy and clumsy on my feet. Nike gave us a pair of the Zoom Hyperfuse and it was a huge difference, it felt like I was wearing a high-top running shoe. They were lighter and felt more "agile" than any other basketball shoe I've ever put on my feet. And for someone like myself who won't wear them that often to play basketball in, they come in some crazy colors that you can wear off the court and be pretty fashionable. I mean, I'm probably not going to increase my court time in the near future but I would consider wearing a pair of these Zoom Hyperfuse with a pair of jeans. In fact, I got a pair of the red, white and blue ones (go USA!) so you may see me kickin them around town in the near future.
Filed under: Basketball, Fitness, health, NBA
Tags: nike, Nike basketball, World Basketball Festival, Zoom Hyperfuse
