Nike Kyrie Low 'Triple Black'
Colorway: Black/Black-Black · Style code: AO8979-004 · Release date: October 5, 2018 · Price: $140 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Kyrie Low 'Floral' (AO8979-002) · Nike Kyrie Low 'Black' (AO8979-003) · Nike Kyrie 4 Low Sneakers (AO8979-100) · Nike Kyrie Low 'Hot Punch' (AO8979-600) · Nike Kyrie Low 1 Sneakers (AO8979-700)
Signature basketball lines tend to run in one direction: each version costs more than the last, and the player's name gets further from the people buying it. The Kyrie Low was Nike's attempt to run the other way: the same design language and much of the same hardware at a lower price and a lower cut, released alongside the numbered models rather than after them.
What it keeps is the part that matters. Zoom Air units sit at both the heel and the forefoot inside a foam midsole, so the shoe is cushioned where a guard actually loads it, and the outsole uses a concentric traction pattern carried over from an earlier Nike basketball design rather than a generic cheaper tread. The cut below the ankle suits players who read a high collar as restriction rather than support, which describes a lot of guards.
An all-black first colourway is the natural way to introduce a shoe like this: nothing to date it, nothing to argue with, and a version that works on any floor. Later Lows added team make-ups and the same kind of graphic runs the numbered line got.