With King James’ transition back to Cleveland, the LeBron 12 provides Nike with the opportunity to draw inspiration from the line’s original roots in new, fresh ways all while incorporating untouched stories. The “Dunkman” series has now been evolved into the “Dunk Force” series, which is simply a marrying of those terms together to drive home the aspect of the force from which LeBron infamously throws down during his tomahawk dunk. Additionally, the lion muse will always be a part of the LeBron line, but new influences have been discovered as well.
Nike LeBron 12 “Dunk Force”“Animal muses are obviously some of our favorite inspirations to draw from at Nike Basketball, but there’s one, in particular, that is crazy,” Rogers said before pointing to the “Instinct” LeBron 12. “If you watch LeBron play the game – especially up close – his eyes never stop moving. They’re always on the swivel. He has 20/20 court vision and the repetition in which he plays the game seems as if he has a sixth sense. We felt that the hummingbird most accurately represents that – the way that it darts around and you can’t really keep track of it. So, we just used that as our primary muse and inspiration for this shoe, which features that purple-to-green color shift in a chameleon-like way.”
Of the seven upcoming Nike LeBron 12 colorways, Rogers stated that the “Dunk Force” and the “Instinct” colorways, which release November 11th and November 22nd, respectively, were his two favorite colorways to work on, but there’s one pair, overall, that he can’t wait for the world to see.
“There was also another story that we told on another upcoming colorway from a fact that we found out about studying LeBron,” said Rogers. “Upon our research, the Miami Heat at the time were using this unique coaching system with cameras, which puts “ghost” players on the floor. On the iPad, it shows players where they’re supposed to be during a particular moment in time as it pertains to defensive positioning. LeBron was actually never where the “ghost” player was supposed to be and actually broke the computer system with how fast he was able to move to and from a double team and be in the next position. When we presented that back to LeBron, he was like, ‘Man, I’m not surprised at all.'”
Nike LeBron 12 “Instinct”
