Nike Hyperdunk '16 'Yin Yang'
Colorway: White/Black-Metallic Silver · Style code: 844368-100 · Release date: June 16, 2016 · Price: $2843 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Hyperdunk 2016 'Black White' (844368-001) · Nike Hyperdunk 2016 TB 'Game Royal' (844368-441) · Nike Hyperdunk 2016 'Midnight Navy' (844368-442) · Nike Hyperdunk 2016 TB 'Team Red' (844368-661)
Flywire is the reason the Hyperdunk looks the way it does. Jay Meschter, a director of innovation at Nike, started from the observation that most of a shoe upper is dead weight: the load actually travels along a handful of lines running from the laces down to the sole. Replace the panels with high-tensile thread - Vectran or nylon - anchored at those points, and the shoe holds the foot with a fraction of the material.
The thread was raced for the first time at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka. A year later Nike put Flywire footwear for running, basketball, football, baseball and tennis in front of the world at the Beijing Olympics before any of it reached shops, and basketball's entry in that group became the Hyperdunk. It stayed Nike's default team shoe for the decade that followed.
By the 2016 model the line had stopped chasing novelty. This one takes the simplest available graphic route: white and black divided across the upper, a straight read on the pack name, with Zoom Air under the heel and forefoot and the Flywire cabling still doing the job it was invented for.