Ẩm thực – The Vince Carter Nike Shox BB4 Sneaker is Finally Making a Comeback

Boing.

Nike Shox BB4 sneaker
>$170, Buy now at Foot Locker

Come and sit, young Gen Zers of NBA Twitter, and let grandpa tell you the tale of the greatest dunk of all time. It was September 2000, the Sydney Olympics. During a meaningless preliminary round matchup between the USA and France, Vince Carter—in a show of sheer will and utter audacity, or maybe just out of boredom—decided to jump over 7’2” center Frédéric Weis. That’s no misprint, kids. Here’s the video evidence:

The French media dubbed it le dunk de la mort, “the dunk of death.” As far as Weis’s career was concerned, it lived up to its name—the Knicks draftee (natch) never played an NBA game. Vince, on the other hand, was already the hottest young star in the game (thanks, in part, to his GOAT-level dunk contest performance earlier that year), and the Olympic dunk sent him into an entirely new stratosphere of notoriety and marketability. Making that meteoric rise alongside him? The then-newly released sneakers on his feet: the Nike Shox BB4.

At the time, Nike had just introduced the Shox technology as a kind of successor to their legendary Air cushioning. Thanks to a brilliant tagline (“Boing.”) and a seriously misleading ad campaign, kids like me were led to believe that Shox would be springy and bouncy and add inches to their vertical—when, in reality, they were solid columns of hard, unforgiving plastic and were pretty terrible to hoop in. But, with Vinsanity as its face and the flashy, futuristic BB4 as its centerpiece, Shox nevertheless became the must-have sneaker line of the era.

The season that immediately followed le dunk de la mort was probably the most consequential of Vince’s high-flying, still-going (!) NBA career: he averaged a career-high 27.6 points in 2000-01—good enough to make the All-NBA Second Team—and led the Raptors to their first-ever playoff series victory, before falling to Allen Iverson and the Sixers in an all-time great seven-game duel. And, of course, he did it all in Shox BB4s.

Between the Swoosh’s propensity for dredging up classic models and the current Y2K nostalgia boom, you’d think an iconic, important shoe like the Shox BB4 would’ve been reissued a handful of times by now. You’d be wrong, though. Despite bringing the sneaker back in 2018 for Vince to play in throughout his record-tying 21st season, Nike never actually released it to the public. Even weirder: twice this year, Nike has announced release dates for BB4 colorways—only to mysteriously pull the plug on both mere days before the drops with no explanation given. At this point, you’d have an easier time trying to track down Frédéric Weis than you would at getting your hands on a fresh pair of BB4s.

That, hopefully, is about to change on Sunday. With Vince heading into his 22nd and final NBA season with the Hawks, Nike appears to finally, finally be re-releasing the Shox BB4. And maybe the reason for all the prior cancellations and delays was simply that they decided it should only come back with a colorway this incredible: icy white leather with tonal claw marks and red-and-purple accents—a fitting tribute to your 2019 NBA Champions, the Toronto Raptors.

Nike Shox BB4

Foot Locker

$170

Buy Now

As long as Nike doesn’t pull the rug out from under us yet again, the Shox BB4 is reportedly dropping at Foot Locker and select Nike retailers on August 25th for $170. We recommend getting in line and cueing up this video on repeat as soon as possible.

By YANG-YI GOH

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