Nike ROKIT x Kyrie 5 'Welcome Home'
Colorway: Multicolor/Metallic Silver · Style code: CJ7899-901 · Release date: October 28, 2019 · Price: $250 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: ROKIT x Nike Kyrie 5 'All Star' (CJ7899-900) · ROKIT x Nike Kyrie 5 GS 'All Star' (AV3837-901) · ROKIT x Nike Kyrie 5 EP 'All Star' (CJ7853-900)
Nike made three hundred pairs. That number sets the terms: this was never a general release but a marker, produced with the skate label ROKIT and titled after the idea of coming back to somewhere.
What it comes back to is a childhood split between two sports. Irving grew up playing basketball and skating, and the shoe treats the second as equal to the first rather than as trivia; the detailing borrows from skate footwear as much as from his signature line.
The Kyrie 5 underneath already had a distinctive feature: a shroud over the lacing shaped after the closing motion of a Venus flytrap. Here it is rendered translucent, so the neon lacing beneath shows through instead of being covered, and three Swooshes are stacked on the panel where one usually sits. ROKIT's name is printed on the external heel counter, the spot normally reserved for the athlete's own mark.
A Zoom Air midsole and a transparent rubber outsole finish it. It released in October 2019 at $130, an ordinary price on a shoe almost nobody was going to be able to buy.