Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Talking Tech with Kobe Bryant!”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here and this week out in la i got to visit a little nike gathering where kobe unveiled his latest shoot the kobe 11., and this is a pretty special one to him. It’S the last shoe he’ll release during his active career and it’s the last one he’ll wear on the court. So i got to talk with him about it: a little bit about tech, a little bit about the shoe and beyond, enjoy during the busy regular season and all the basketball and all the training. All you got all the stuff.
You guys are doing how much tech smartphones cameras. Whatever do you get to follow. I know roy is actually like pretty into tech shout out to roy.
If he’s watching what kind of stuff you get to see. Well, i mean from a tech perspective. You know i’ve. I’Ve kind of tried to dabble into it a little bit, but i found myself not being extremely passionate about it unless it’s centered around sports right and things that involve health training, things of that sort. But overall i wouldn’t describe myself as a very tech savvy person. My question related to that, since we’re carrying smartphones all the time now yeah entering the league, like what kind of tech did you carry? Did you like, listen to music for a game? Have that kind of stuff going on yeah i mean i, you know it was back in the day.
Let’S see when i first came in the league, i had a phone that was probably about the size of my head yeah, you know what i mean and then we kind of graduated to having sidekicks and things like that, and i remember having walkman players and cd Players, my kids have no idea yeah. What a cd player is, let alone a walkman. It was like wait.
You had to rewind what yeah wait when that song was over. You had to flip it over and like use the other side of the tape. Yeah yeah yeah, so you know um.
When i first came in lee, the world was such a different place than it is now in terms of connecting people and being able to follow and things of that sort. Yeah, that’s. The other thing. Is the internet lets you connect to your teammates, your fans, all kinds of stuff like that um, but it also gives you a great advantage by the way, because back then, when i came to league, i had to do a lot of research myself, which involved going And actually getting books on the history of the game and other players, and things like that, but nowadays i mean you’re a click away from finding out make scouting easier. It makes extremely easier yeah right, and so you know as a as a culture. We should actually be much smarter, yeah, yeah versus becoming dumber right because of the crutch of technology.
Exactly no, i agree completely so get into the shoe uh being interested in the tech of the shoe. I know you have a big hand in the design. How you put it together, how much like how closely you get to work with the designer specifically on the tech and, what’s going into the shoe extremely close yeah, you know, because the shoe is always an extension of the athlete in this case you know, for you Know the years i’ve been with nike it’s an extension of myself right, so the shoe must um must be something that’s going to help me perform better yeah and if it doesn’t do that, we’re not going to create the shoe.
I heard a story earlier today about soccer and soccer shoes and having a low-cut shoe, i play a sport called ultimate frisbee may or may not have heard of it, but a lot of us wear soccer cleats to play so that kind of struck a vibe with Me tell me about how this kind of stuff translates from the soccer pitch or cleats or low-cut cleats to the basketball court sure so growing up. I played a lot of soccer yeah and so i’ve always been a big fan of the sport, and so i remember watching the game on tv as a champions league match and saying man. They put a lot of torque on their ankles actually more than we do.
Yeah, why can’t i create a low basketball? Shoe doesn’t make any sense. So then i started doing a little bit more research and started kind of figuring out how the ankle actually benefits from being able to move freely into spring yeah. So you put less stress on your knee joints and things of that nature. I said you know we’re gon na do a low-cut shoe um, but now we have to really lock in the hill yeah right, because you can’t have the hill sliding around, because it puts puts the athlete in jeopardy, gives them more. Uh makes it more susceptible to ankle sprains, and things like that.
You know you have to make sure that the forefoot is really flexible right. You have to make sure you’re strengthening in areas that are extremely important, where, in the height shoe you can kind of get away with right those things yeah, i feel like a lot of ultimate players. You either get a low cut cleat. I wear a soccer cleat, but then you get like something for the ankle. In addition, right or you’ll sacrifice weight and get more on the ankle right.
We don’t compromise exactly so. This is this is the flyknit material. This is a big part of the weight savings. Tell me about like, like details, you had a hand in to design this kind of stuff yeah. So what we did with the with the 11 is we actually improved the flyknit, so we made the flyknit sturdier, made it stronger, um and and then we’ve actually combined technology. So we’ve combined uh some free technology, we’ve combined some of the zoom and lunar technology with been some of the staples with some of my other shoes, but they normally behave in isolation right.
They normally don’t communicate with each other. So it’s been our challenge to try to figure out how to create kind of this marriage between the technologies. Awesome best of luck in getting more of that tech savvy stuff going. I hope you get on top of the game. I would recommend a smartphone right now, but i wouldn’t know what to say, because i don’t know what kind of usage you have, i’m a big, i’m a big iphone guy. I mean you know, i’m a big iphone guy. Okay, fair! So i think that’s pretty much! It thanks for being a part of this. I appreciate the time uh and hopefully we get to do it again. Thank you. Awesome. .