We've chronicled Nike nike 95s Basketball's trip back through the past twenty years over these past couple weeks and today we encounter the design that's made more of an impact on the last few years than any other on the list. The Nike Air Foamposite One debuted in 1997 after a product meeting with Penny Hardaway left the star of the Air Max Penny 1 and II with absolute certainty that "This [was his] next shoe!" In fact, the Air Foamposite One was a Penny 2.5 of sorts, heavily influencing the III and taking cues from the wavy-lined predecessors.

The Nike Air Foamposite One is a shoe that opened minds and assisted a generation of players. What many don't know is that nike 97 it was inspired by sunglass protection. Uniting the Advanced group, then known as A.P.E. (Advanced Product Engineering), marketing and the designers at Nike, lead designer Eric Avar recalls the question, "Okay, what could we do? How do we step nike 97s outside of the norm of the way we look at design and manufacturing shoes?"

The Nike Air Hyperflight was a response to the question with which Bowerman met Avar in product meetings over the years: "Can you make it lighter?" Click through to see the sketches that show the transition from the rocket-infused BB4 into a new era of synthetics and bold colorways and stick with Sneaker News for the second half of this series next week.

As we've looked back through nike af1 some of the most influential Nike Basketball designs over the past twenty years, significant attention has been paid to the progression of certain designers and how they've captured an athlete's personality or the zeitgeist of the time. This next entrant represents the culmination of all of these forces and a transition into a newly evolved world as for the first time in 2006, Nike Air completely takes over the sole for a more durable and dependable cushioning solution than with a traditional foam midsole.

While the game of basketball was certainly evolving into a faster, up-and-down game, there was still a player who earned his paycheck with his back to the basket and under the boards. Max Air was always the platform for those athletes who appreciated some assistance on their return to terra firma. In basketball, footwear nike air force 1 black has to accommodate a 200-plus pound athlete with upwards of 2,000 pounds of force on his feet upon landing. That's some serious force.

With the advent of the Nike Air Max 360 Air Sole, it was finally possible to create a shoe without foam, thus letting a player ball entirely on air. Utilizing thermoforming technology (versus blow-molding), Nike engineers created a smoother surface at the top of the Air Sole unit to attach it more securely to the upper. While foam has the benefit of an added cushioning tool, foam also compresses over time. So its removal meant longer-lasting consistent cushioning.