Kobe Bryant's latest shoe inspired by Manny Pacquiao
Kobe Bryant has been known to prefer low top basketball shoes. But for his latest signature shoe with Nike, the Los Angeles Laker superstar is going for a high-top. He took his inspiration from fellow Nike endorser Manny Pacquiao.
“The idea, first going to a low-cut shoe, football had a great influence in my life, looking at how they move, and same thing happened here," Bryant said.
“I was with Pacquiao watching him train and prepare for a fight and I’m looking down, looking at his boxing boots, I’m saying ‘Man, I wonder if there’s something there?’ The timing, everything just kind of matched up,” Bryant added in an interview with Bleacher Report.
The initial reaction to the high-top was that it was done to protect Bryant’s newly repaired Achilles’ tendon, which he tore last season. But Eric Avar, Nike Vice President of Design and Special Projects denied this assumption.
“We started this project about two and a half years ago. It was a notion of going with a high-top, more a dynamic high-top was something that we’ve been working on,” Avar said in the same interview.
Bryant who is gearing up for his return to the NBA has already used the shoe for practice and has been impressed with the result.
“I practiced in it today and the thing that I was most impressed it was the responsiveness of the shoe,” Bryant said. “There is no responsiveness to the high-top in general. When you change directions, your ankle is hitting the product and there’s no give there but with this there is. So you can have that tactile stimulation on the ankle but you also have that kind of shoe that gives. It moves with you, which is the genius behind the Flyknit.”
Bryant and Pacquiao have had a good relationship even though the boxer is known as a Boston Celtics fan. Pacquiao watched Bryant and other NBA stars play an exhibition game in the Philippines. Bryant then returned the favor by visiting Pacquiao during the recent NBA lockout as the boxer was training for his third fight against Juan Manuel Marquez.
