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LeBron James to debut the Nike LeBron 19 in ‘Space Jam
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LeBron James’ summer will look a little different this year after he exited the playoffs in the opening round, marking an early end to the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020 title defense. In the 18th campaign of his NBA career, he missed more games with a high ankle sprain – 26 – than he ever has in a single season.Get more news about Best basketball sneaker,you can vist nbaboss.us!
But the NBA superstar actually has a new team. “I’m gonna let the ankle rest for about a month, and then I’m gonna gear up with Lola, Taz, Granny, Bugs and the rest of the crew. I’m gonna play for the Tune Squad this summer instead of the Olympics,” joked James after the Lakers dropped their first-round playoff series to the Phoenix Suns, with a 113-100 Game 6 loss on June 3. He’s not leaving the Lakers, but he’ll be joining a roster of cartoon characters in the lead role of Space Jam: A New Legacy, the Warner Bros. reboot of the Michael Jordan-led classic Space Jam, which hit theaters almost 25 years ago.
On July 16, with the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy, James will become the newest member of the Tune Squad. The movie will also deliver another debut, when James’ latest signature sneaker is unveiled on the silver screen. On Tuesday, Nike announced the LeBron 19, which will arrive on James’ feet for the first time in Space Jam. After nearly two decades of debuting all his previous models on real-life hardwood, Nike teamed up with Warner Bros. to flip the script of a signature sneaker rollout.
“This is the first time we’ve ever really debuted a shoe in a movie,” said Jason Petrie, a senior footwear designer for Nike Basketball who’s overseen the designs of James’ last 13 signature models. “Every chance we get to work with LeBron and build a shoe for him, it’s an amazing opportunity. Now, we get to combine with the amazing team at Warner Bros. … and that moviemaking magic and imagination. When you’re able to combine those two worlds, building a product within them was just an incredible opportunity and one that we took full advantage of. We were really excited to get outside the normal world of product creation and now exist in this alternate reality where LeBron is existing with the Tune Squad.”
It’s certainly the first time Nike has debuted a basketball shoe in a movie. However, it’s hard to forget the futuristic, auto-lacing Nike Mag that legendary designer Tinker Hatfield built for Marty McFly’s feet in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II. (Originally produced as a one-off for the second installment of the series, the Nike Mag wasn’t officially released until 2011, when 1,500 pairs were auctioned on eBay with proceeds benefiting the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.)
In two previous instances of signature Nike Basketball athletes headlining films, each player debuted the shoe on the basketball court ahead of the movie’s release. In the NBA playoffs on May 14, 1995, Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic, Michael Jordan debuted the “Space Jam” Air Jordan 11s, almost 18 months before Space Jam premiered in November 1996. More recently, Kyrie Irving broke out the “Uncle Drew” Nike Kyrie 4s for the first time in December 2017 at the TD Garden in Boston, six months before Uncle Drew hit theaters in June 2018 with Irving starring as the titular character.
In September 2018, after being linked to the movie for more than four years, James officially signed on to star in a follow-up to the original Space Jam, produced by his entertainment company, SpringHill. The opportunity marked James’ first starring role, after one movie appearance as a supporting character with Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in the 2015 comedy Trainwreck. By February 2019, the release date — July 16, 2021 — of the new Space Jam was announced, while James’ team of Nike designers, led by Petrie, embarked upon the 18- to 24-month process of crafting the LeBron 19.