The strange case of the sneaker blowouts in NBA

San Francisco's Chase Center, they're into the 3rd quarter of the game between Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks when the guests' guard Wesley Matthews slides slightly on the parquet during a defensive move and finds himself with the left shoe literally quartered, capturing immediately the eyes of the sideline photographers. The sneaker in question is the Nike Zoom Freak 1, the signature shoe of his teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo personalized with the colors of the Wisconsin franchise, presented a few months ago. It's not the first time that an NBA basketball player finds himself with a destroyed shoe, but it's still a fairly rare case, which has a very close precedent.

In addition to showing off for his stunning skills and for have signed a deal with Jordan, Zion Williamson became viral last year during his college experience when, in February 2019, was the main actor of the blowout of the Nike PG 2,5 model during the match between Duke Blue Devils and UNC Tar Heels. A case that made a lot of talk and in which the Californian brand Skechers also intervened, trolling Nike. To find other famous blowouts you have to go back over the years: in 2018 Isaiah Thomas was photographed off-pitch with a halved pair of Nike Zoom Kobe 4s from 2009, while Aaron Gordon with the Magic jersey in 2016 was 'betrayed' by a pair of Nike HyperRevs. Often the fault was due to too old shoes: it happened twice in 2014 both to Nick Young with the OG "Cool Gray" Air Jordan 11s released 13 years earlier and to Tony Wroten, whose sole completely detached from the rest of the shoe due to the glue of a 9 years older Jordan 10 model.