Nike Give Basketball Journo Scoop Jackson His Own Shoe
Scoop Jackson is a legend in the basketball world. He's been an ESPN columnist for over a decade, and previously edited mags like SLAM and XXL. Scoop's also considered the authority on basketball shoes: he quite literally wrote the book on it: Sole Provider: Thirty years of Nike Basketball. It's a textbook for students of Nike's b-ball culture (and we were lucky enough to back in 2013 about his writing process).
Speaking at Nike's Portland HQ on Monday, revealed that he's spent the past 14 months designing a shoe to honour Jackson. According to coverage of the event, Hatfield hit Scoop up and asked him to write a letter about the personal significance basketball holds for him. Tinker then used the letter as his design brief, and a prototype of the shoe's being developed right now. Other than the auctioned off for Carl Sager's 'SagerStrong' charity, this is – as far as we can recall – the first sneaker colab with a basketball journo.
Interestingly, Hatfield revealed that Scoop hasn't even seen the shoe yet! Apparently Nike's intellectual property laws prevent him from sharing the design with anyone, even the man whose name will be attached to the model. All we know so far is that Jackson requested the shoes be basketball-friendly. Considering Scoop's long-time love for the Knicks, some references to the team might be incorporated into the design.
We'll be sure to keep you updated as we (and Scoop) learn more about this historic release.