ÿþFollowing up on yesterday s debut, we see the nike air max 1 ultra moire next entrant in Nike Basketball s  20 Years retrospective pick up right where the Air Force 180 Low left off. That model commonly linked to Charles Barkley could be seen as the first step in Nike embracing the  90s attitude, and here we see more evidence of Tinker Hatfield s impeccable timing. Hatfield and assistant Eric Avar saw basketball shorts getting longer, and following the 1980s arms race that had court kicks higher and heavier than ever before, it was simply time for a change.

The Nike Air Foamposite One is a shoe that opened minds and assisted a generation of players. What many don t know is that it was inspired by sunglass protection. Uniting the nike revolution Advanced group, then known as A.P.E. (Advanced Product Engineering), marketing and the designers at Nike, lead designer Eric Avar recalls the question,  Okay, what could we do? How do we step outside of the norm of the way we look at nike air max white design and manufacturing shoes?

The Foamposite now needed its athlete.  We had it and we d been working with it for some time and were, quite honestly, a little undecided on what to do with it, recalled Avar. On meeting Penny Hardaway to discuss the Nike Air Penny III, Avar brought along an early Foamposite sample.  I wasn t sure I was even going to show that sample to him. We had other ideas we were presenting. But he leaned over, nike shoes air max looked into the bag and said,  What is that? He reached in, grabbed it and he says,  This is my next shoe! I was like,  Okay! There s the go-to-market strategy! 

The Nike Air Force 180 Low was introduced in 1992 and was built for the ground-and-pound aspect of basketball and made for players like Charles Barkley in mind. Boasting 50% more Air than any other Nike Air shoe, the Air Force 180 Low was a key player in Nike s game-changing journey. Continue on for a look at this vintage classic and stay tuned for the next chapter.

Once the Nike Flywire proved its mettle in testing, Avar and the team s approach was to create a design that allowed most of the shoe to fall away into the background in order to make the Flywire in the midfoot the focal point. Another new Nike innovation, Nike Lunarlon, nike zoom structure would also make its first appearance in a basketball shoe as a key performance element of a design that borrowed elements from a shoe that, at the time, was only the stuff of legend, the Nike Mag.

The Nike Air Hyperflight was a response to the question with which Bowerman met Avar in product meetings over the years:  Can you make it lighter? Click through to see the sketches that show the transition from the rocket-infused BB4 into a new era of synthetics and bold colorways and stick with Sneaker News for the second half of this series next week.