The Art of Kobe

Story By Simon Martin & Design by Jeremiah McNair

The

ART

Like Jordan before him, Kobe collaborated with Nike to merge technical innovation with a hero’s journey—epic battles fought, championship rings won, and the Mamba metamorphosis into mythic status.

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KOBE

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Q / A

“To Kobe, a shoe or t-shirt design wasn’t just design,” says former Nike Basketball Art Director Eugene Serebrennikov. “It also had to tell a story.”

Interview with Howie Kahn, Author, Sneakers

KOBE 11 Muse Pack

The Muse Collection

Nike commemorated Kobe’s final game—in which he scored 60 in a Lakers win—with a tribute pack from his most frequent Nike collaborators: then-President and CEO Mark Parker, VP of Design and Special Projects Tinker Hatfield, and designer Eric Avar.

KOBE 11 Tinker Muse: A Jordan III motif nods to the Air Jordans Kobe loved in his youth

KOBE 11 Avar Muse: A Yosemite National Park motif illustrates the pair’s mutual love for nature and hiking

KOBE 11 Parker Muse: A snakeskin motif and 3D texture on the heel nod to the Mamba

KYRIE 3

Mamba Mentality

While not one of Kobe’s shoes, Kyrie Irving’s KYRIE 3 Mamba Mentality commemorates the All-Star Laker and the bond between the two players. It is a modern version of the KOBE 5, one of Irving’s favorite game shoes.

The yellow and black colorway pays tribute the players’ shared love for martial artist Bruce Lee

Snakeskin texture represents the Black Mamba. It fades into Kyrie’s Samurai texture, representing a metaphorical passing of the torch

Four red slash marks pay tribute to Lee’s signature scratched face and chest in . Enter the Dragon.

“Kyrobe” logo merges Bryant’s and Irving’s personal Nike logos into one

In 2014, having achieved five championship rings, dozens of records, and numerous All-Star appearances, Kobe’s biggest challenge still lied ahead. This shoe, for Kobe’s 17th season, was inspired by his comeback from an Achilles heel injury that sidelined him for nine months.

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The Masterpiece

Nike Kobe 9 Elite

Boxing shoe design reflected aggressive play, will to win

Nine sutures symbolizing Achilles heel surgery

Traction pattern modeled after pressure points from Kobe’s actual foot

The shoe’s frenetic design reflects the power of chaos and of Kobe’s love for DC’s mayhem master, the Joker.

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Co-authoring Sneakers, with Alex French, gave Kahn an in-depth knowledge of footwear design and the relationship Kobe Bryant had with Nike designer Eric Avar. He interviewed both for the book and here Kahn expounds on Kobe’s connection to narrative and design.

“The Masterpiece didn’t follow any trends or look like anything else that came before it,” explains former Nike Basketball Art Director Eugene Serebrennikov. “It exemplified everything Kobe stood for; it was something unique to himself— something that was honest and told his comeback story.”

“Kobe was always the very first one at the gym practicing, hitting hundreds of free throws after games, and constantly rewatching his tapes,” Serebrennikov explains. “This obsession for perfection inspired everybody around him to meet that intensity, that drive, even as designers.”

“As designers, we always had to deliver a certain level of quality for Kobe,” Serebrennikov says. “We had to meet his mentality to go above and beyond until it was time to touch out.”

On the shoes that best captured Kobe’s "Mamba Mentality."

The V and the IX are the legacy shoes. The V, the low top, tells the story of an athlete who would prove correct for defying convention and always finding a way to make his game better and stronger while the IX is really a hint at who Kobe would become in retirement. That's one of the best and most personal narrative sneakers ever made and it's telling in terms of how much Kobe cared about and understood the power of a story. The IX seemed to suggest an immersion in the narrative world and pointed toward how many stories Kobe still had left to tell.

On Kobe’s perseverance.

Kobe was supremely tough and played through a lot of injuries. He also grew to see himself as something of a warrior and conquering hero, the kind for whom a surrounding mythology, some of it self-generated, only grows and grows. After his Achilles injury, he was stitched, or maybe stapled, back up in 9 places and made the decision to put 9 parallel marks across the back of his upcoming shoe; in a feat of numerological convergence, the shoe was also the IX. Kobe felt strongly about his shoes telling a personal story. So, it made sense, as an autobiographical statement, that he used the back of his upper as a way to show what had happened to his body. It also goes to show how much these shoes mean to the athletes who wear them. It's an extension, at times, of who they are. The IX didn't only speak to a comeback, it spoke to vulnerability. Kobe seemed to also be showing that he had scars.

On Kobe’s passion for storytelling and emotional meaning in design.

Kobe had a fascination with stories and narrative in general. And sneaker designers always want their shoes to tell a story. For them, Kobe was a perfect and inspired match. His shoes contain references from everything from Beethoven to Picasso to professional wrestling. He told me the IX is even embedded with a secret language and some coded messaging. He wasn't aware whether anybody had figured that out. His decorative input, I'd say, was deep. And deepening even in retirement since he said he suddenly just had more time to read and take in culture and think about new elements that might show up in design.

On Kobe’s input into the creative process.

Kobe's input was, by far, the most radical. Deciding to play in a low was a total sea change. Ankle support, provided by high tops, had been the prevailing trend from the mid-80s on. So, we're looking at 30-plus years of high top innovation until 2009, when Kobe and Nike released the V. He thought his ankles would get weak in high tops and he'd gain more strength from having more active ankles.

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Embedded “Veni, Vedi, Vici” phrase, Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered.

Model shown: Avar Muse

Model shown: Parker Muse

Model shown: Avar Muse