Nike Basketball 1992-2012 – Nike Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 (2004)

Nike’s look back at “20 Designs That Changed the Game” takes us squarely to the contemporary era, focusing on a 2004 shoe that’s something of a sequel to 1992′s Nike Air Flight Huarache. According to lead designer Eric Avar, the idea behind the Nike Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 was “to bring back classic basketball design principles in a very modern way.” Avar’s conversations with his design team revolved around moving away from the outlandish and experimental designs that dominated the marketplace in the previous decade, almost rendering a straightforward aesthetic off to the margins. According to Avar: “It was very good for the athletes and for the marketplace, but we questioned whether we were being bold and crazy for the sake of it. How could we return to more purposeful and ‘grounded’ product?” The answer lay in the original Nike Air Flight Huarache’s exoskeleton fit, along with the classic looks of the Air Force 1, resulting in a shoe that blended the modern and the classic, and built for a player who had the versatility of a Kobe Bryant. Accordingly, the Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 enabled explosiveness and quickness through a lightweight Phylon sole, low-to-the court Nike Zoom responsiveness and formfitting leather/suede upper. Continue reading for a gallery of images depicting the development of the shoe or see other essential designs by Nike in our RE-Fresh segment.