Nike Chuck Posite 'Metallic Silver'
Colorway: Metallic Silver/Black · Style code: 684758-001 · Release date: 2014 · Price: $300 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Chuck Posite 'Cave Purple' (684758-500) · Nike Chuck Posite Sneakers (684758-501)
Charles Barkley's last NBA game was on 19 April 2000, against Vancouver. He had ruptured a quadriceps tendon the previous December, came back for one night, scored on an offensive rebound and putback, and stopped. He went into the Hall of Fame in 2006 for his own career and again in 2010 as part of the 1992 Olympic team, having taken the MVP award in 1993, his first season in Phoenix.
That leaves fourteen years between the retirement and this shoe, which explains what the Chuck Posite actually is. It was never a signature model in the working sense (nobody was going to play in it) but a 2014 reading of what a Barkley shoe from the nineties would look like if Nike built it with the materials it had by then. The nubuck upper is the period reference; the carbon-fiber Hyperposite shell wrapped around it is not, and neither is the Lunarlon midsole underneath.
The branding is split in a way that suits the subject. His name sits on the outside of the tongue and his signature marks on the inside, with reflective detailing running through the rest. Metallic Silver is the coldest of the treatments it came in, which leaves the shell shape doing all of the talking.