Nike was one of the biggest trending topics on February 20th for a reason they probably weren't too happy about. The Duke Blue Devils were playing against the North Carolina Tar Heels and all eyes were supposed to be on Zion Williamson who is projected to go first overall in this year's draft. Unfortunately, just 30 seconds into the game, Zion broke his Nike PG 2.5, busting through the outsole and spraining his knee. While Williamson has since returned to action, the broken shoe was a PR disaster for Nike.
In the aftermath, Nike has gifted Zion a reinforced pair of Nike Kyrie 4's which surely won't suffer the same fate as his last sneaker. Nike has also been looking for answers as to why the shoe broke. According to Nike sneaker designer Tobie Hatfield, the brand goes through a painstaking process of inspecting the bad shoe, often times referred to as an "autopsy."
”We basically go through what’s called an ‘autopsy’ of the shoe. Any shoe that has issues or potential issues, we just have to go and find out,” Hatfield explained according to Hypebeast. ”Was there a manufacturing issue, design issue or any of that kind of stuff? It’s just a matter of going through the whole shoe and finding out what the issues are and then we go solve them again. It’s really no different than how we’ve been doing it all along.”
Williamson and Duke will begin their quest for NCAA basketball supremacy on March 22nd against the ND State Bison.
