KD's newest shoe inspired by Kobe sneaker

Kevin Durant embarked on the biggest summer of his career with a life-altering decision to make, entering free agency for the first time in his nine years in the NBA. Just after he announced he’d be joining the Golden State Warriors, he wanted to get back on the hardwood as soon as possible, doing what he loves most.

“I just want to play,” Durant told The Vertical just before the 2016 Olympics. “I’m excited to play the game again. Olympics [are] giving me that opportunity.”

Along with his USA Basketball teammates, Durant returned home in late August with yet another gold medal to add to his trophy case. The stage allowed him to minimize the stateside noise and negativity surrounding his decision, and simply focus on the joy the game brings him.

“It was therapy for me after making a big change in my life,” Durant told The Vertical’s Michael Lee.

While most players on Team USA wore Nike’s new Hyperdunk and Clear Out team shoes, Durant took advantage of the global platform as the only player in the tournament to debut his signature shoe for next season.

The KD9 adds new technology and materials to Durant’s signature shoe series and takes some inspiration from a recent Kobe Bryant sneaker. After noticing the knitted fabric upper on the ninth edition of the Nike Kobe series that was released in early 2014, Durant went to his team of designers at Nike and requested the material for his own shoe.

“I was jealous,” Durant said, laughing. “That’s when Flyknit first jumped on the scene, and I was telling my guys, ‘Man, I would love to have that on my shoe.’ It looked so nice, first of all, but I didn’t know how it played. To see Kobe in it, I was a little jealous.”

Durant’s shoes to date have featured a variety of leathers and synthetic materials, but by incorporating the Flyknit material into his line, he was hoping to have a softer shoe that can be game-ready right out of the box.

“The benefit of knit is it’s a really comfortable material to start with, and it’s softer by hand just because of the nature of it,” said Leo Chang, Durant’s longtime signature shoe designer. “Starting with that as the base, that was something that Kevin talked about, to have it already feel broken in.”

While some athletes might not admit it, Durant is often looking around the industry at other players’ signature sneakers, taking note of different colors, themes, materials and technologies.

“I follow all of our guys when their stuff drops,” Durant said. “I try to steal a little bit of [future] intel as well, when I’m on [Nike’s] campus.”

Bryant may have been the first to debut the Flyknit technology, but Durant says he understands as he looks back fondly on Bryant’s accomplished career.

“If Golden State would’ve won the Finals, [Mamba Day] would’ve probably been the highlight of the season, but Cleveland went and shocked the world,” Durant said. “Kobe is up there, just because at 37-years-old [at the time], coming off surgeries and all that stuff, to get 60 in your last game is how you sign off a storybook ending. It was cool to compete against him for all of the years that I did, and to have a chance to sit down and talk to him and become a brother to someone like that, that’s something I’m always going to remember.”

As he took that material inspiration from Kobe’s ninth shoe for his own KD9, Durant and Chang continued down the path of refining the shoe for KD’s game.

“I’ve always approached the signature process as getting to know the person first before even putting pen to paper,” Chang said. “It can’t be that I’m making up some fictitious story or some fake insights. It has to come from him.”

Even though he signed a seven-year endorsement deal for $60 million after turning pro in 2007, Durant wasn’t sure what to expect from the signature shoe process early on. “I didn’t think Nike would do that much for me. I figured they’d just say, ‘OK, here’s your shoe, go put it on,'” Durant said. “I was prepared for that, and I was just happy [to have my own shoe].”

As he soon found out, the relationship he’s built with his Nike reps and Chang over the years all started with a trip to his hometown near Washington, D.C. “They came to my neighborhood, and they wanted to see the house I grew up in and where me and my cousins used to play,” Durant said. “Where I first learned to play the game of basketball and where I took my first shot ever. They wanted to see all of that stuff, and I was excited, because nobody had wanted to get that deep into me as a person, where I come from and the people that helped make me who I am. They cared about how I got to this point, and they didn’t just care about now, they wanted to know about the journey and the steps that I made to get to where I am.”

Now nine years in with the brand, that signature process has become second nature. A subtle detail on this year’s model can be found on the heel of the shoe, where a camera’s rubberized handgrip texture was incorporated into the piece surrounding the “KD” logo, a nod to his recent love of photography. In addition to smaller signature details, KD has often come to the table with the big-picture idea that he wants a shoe that’s “light and tight” around his foot. This year was no different.

“I just wanted a shoe that was going to keep me stable and keep me mobile,” he said. “Something that was going to let me move the way that I like to move, side to side and stop on a dime. I wanted to just run and just jump, do all of those things, and still keep the firm and stable feel to the shoe.”

The shoe also incorporates a full-length Zoom Air unit for responsive cushioning under the foot. Each of Durant’s past sneakers have utilized Nike’s Zoom Air technology in some fashion, with this being the most visible application to date. Just under that Zoom Air bag, the shoe’s outsole pattern was designed after studying the undulations and key zones of a pressure map of KD’s feet in motion.

“Even things like his pressure map and where he plays on his feet, for most players, you’ll see the heel flare up on the pressure map, the forefoot and then the toe,” Chang said. “In the midfoot, where he broke his bone and had the metatarsal Jones fracture, he actually has a lot of pressure there. We shifted the silhouette of the outsole so that it accounts for that and to help give him more cushioning.”

While Durant’s foot injury was something that his team at Nike had to take into account, they were also working on the KD9 with the air of uncertainty that surrounded his upcoming free agency. Chang said a lot of the initial versions of the shoe included neutral colors … just in case.

“For sure, we were keeping our color palettes a little more open in case there are changes,” Chang said. “And honestly, we never know. We don’t have any kind of inside scoop along the way or anything.”

As Durant now looks ahead, he’s long approached life and the game of basketball with an adaptive mentality, hoping his instincts will provide him with clarity along the way. “Every situation that I’ve been in, I had to step in and figure it out,” he said. “Whether it’s coming [to Austin for school], whether it’s going to Seattle, going to Oklahoma City, Oak Hill Academy or four different high schools. I always had to step in, adapt and adjust. I just step in and just go. On the court, if they throw two defenders at me, I gotta figure it out.”

This next season, of course, he’ll have to adapt more than ever. His new shoe is only the starting point as Durant enters a new city, playing for a new team, taking on the grandest expectations imaginable.

“In the game of basketball, you have to react off of instinct,” Durant said. “It’s cool in life to plan, but things are just gonna happen. I try to take that same approach in basketball and in life sometimes, being able to adapt to any situation that comes.”

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