DALLAS — It was just before noon March 6, a day warm enough for hoodie and shorts in Dallas’ artsy Deep Ellum district. Even though the sneaker launch didn’t officially start until 6 p.m., there was already a line at the entrance of Sneaker Politics in anticipation of Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving’s first shoe with China-based brand Anta Sports, the KAI 1. With its lawn chairs and carryout food containers, this scene recalled a time when camping out was popular in the sneaker community.
“We still stand in line for releases, do raffle tickets, everything,” Thomas Rena, one of the handful of people who had been camping out since midnight, said. “This process is still a big part of the Dallas community and how we get shoes to this day.”
He paused. “But I can’t remember a player [here] actually having a release like this.”
A snapshot of what “like this” looked like: The Main Street block between Malcolm X Boulevard and Crowdus Street where Sneaker Politics is located was sectioned off for an all-day block party with live DJs, live painting, food and a pop-up basketball court. The storefront was plastered with Anta and KAI 1 branding, the shoe was displayed inside and miniature 3D versions were given out as gifts. At nightfall, the scene was illuminated by amethyst fluorescent lights, giving it the feel of a vibranium cave.
Mavericks players have had sneaker moments and shoes worth hitting the store for in the past. Then-guard Jason Kidd’s Air Zoom models were mid-’90s darlings, and then-forward Jamal Mashburn put Fila on the basketball map around the same time. Former forward Michael Finley is an OG Jordan Brand member, and current guard Luka Dončić has two signature shoes.
Irving’s Anta KAI 1 rollout hits a little different.
“I’m really honored and grateful, a lot of gratitude in my heart right now for everybody pulling up making this a true celebration,” Irving told a group of Anta and Sneaker Politics employees before the first customers were allowed inside the store. Irving also sold a symbolic first pair to his children. “They stopped the whole block for us. So I definitely wanna make my rounds and say thank you to as many people as I can to make sure I show the love back in return. Especially to people waiting out there since midnight, which is crazy.”
He paused to take a breath and made the crossed-finger gesture he often flashes in photos and public appearances. “We’re here, man. The tribe’s here.”
Anta
The shoe is a group project between Irving and Anta’s team of design director Jared Subawon, color design director Shaneika Warden, and art director Astin Davis, who collectively bring more than 20 years of experience to the studio. Subawon’s aerodynamic design is meant to complement Irving’s unorthodox fluidity. The add-ons are derived from his code of “strength, agility, focus, and speed,” which are represented through the African-inspired symbols created by Davis for the design.
“Back in the ’90s, basically every single basketball shoe out, you could rock off or on court,” Subawon said. He delivered the popular Evo Knit and a lifestyle shoe for Meek Mill when he was the footwear design director at Puma. “I kind of missed that type of style in basketball where everything now just seems so performance-based. I wanted to make it seem like anybody can rock it at any given time.”
In the debut colorway, titled “Artist on Court,” the ideas are given an extra glow by a fluorescent and purple color palette developed by Warden that mirrors Irving’s personality.
“We know that purple represents royalty in a European sense, but in other cultures, it represents mysticism,” Warden said. She held color design positions at Jordan Brand and Under Armour. “We talk about Black boy joy and Black girl magic, so I felt like it was the perfect color representation to mimic how magical Kyrie moves on the court and how he thinks off the court.”
Irving’s Native American heritage is celebrated from front to back as the toe box is accented with embroidery resembling a headdress. The heel tab has a hanging feather accessory like the one he often wears on his right ear. The Anta arrow molding flows into the shoe’s upper, and the outsole has his mother’s name, Elizabeth Irving, etched into the rubber.
“That’s what Kyrie really wanted,” Davis said. He created Irving’s new “Enlightened Warrior” logo shield, which is emblazoned on the tongue and accompanying apparel. “He told us he wanted every piece of the shoe to be artwork.”
As Kyrie often speaks of belonging to a tribe, it makes sense that the three designers who built the shoe are an extension of a design family with decades of personal and professional ties.
In 2017, footwear design veteran Sean Oshea left his position as head of design for running and training at Puma to become general manager of Anta’s U.S. operations. He was tasked with building the company’s presence in America from the ground up. He convinced his college friend and designer Geoff Deas to come on board as creative director. One of his next hires was Subawon, a Miami native who went to high school with fellow designers Guercy Eugene and Frantz Mondesir, who later followed him from Puma to Anta. All three of them attended Columbus College of Art & Design and then transferred to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where they met Davis, also an alum and former Puma co-worker. Bringing it full circle, Anta design director Duane Lawrence spoke at a career day in Miami, which inspired Subawon, Eugene and Mondesir to pursue design.
While familiarity has helped the team work together, they wanted to avoid it when making the shoe. With eight models of sneakers attached to Irving’s name with Nike, Anta’s design team faced the challenge of creating something new for a recognizable figure while trying to increase their presence in sneaker design.
Anta
“I was definitely worried about that at first,” Subawon said, noting that his original design had triangles on the midsole that resembled prior Kyrie sneakers. He also brings up the coincidence of going to high school with Irving’s primary designer at Nike, Benjamin Nethongkome. “So we really had to sit back and figure out how the shoe is going to stand out and make people forget to the point there is no comparison. That was really tough.”
“It was like bringing in a new presidency,” Davis said. “You gotta get rid of what the other person did and bring in your new stuff. Because the last thing you want to do is have anybody saying you bit off of this or that. We started from ground zero.”
“Everything was created alongside each other,” Warren said. ”That’s why there’s a harmonious feel to the shoe.”
If there’s anything Irving sought in a new shoe deal, it was harmony.
Irving’s relationship with Nike was as smooth as his handles for seven years. The Kyrie 1 through 7 models ranked high in sales and popularity with children and NBA players. However, Irving’s relationship with Nike unraveled during a tumultuous stretch between July 2021 and December 2022. First, there was the comment on Instagram where he blasted the company for allegedly releasing his Kyrie 8 shoe without his consent, calling the shoe “trash.” In November 2022, his contract was suspended following the backlash from Irving posting a tweet with a link to an antisemitic film. He and Nike mutually parted ways in December 2022, a year before the contract was set to expire.
With Irving still playing at an All-Star level, he instantly became one of the most coveted sneaker free agents. There were reports that he was in talks with Black-owned brand Sia Collective, and he was spotted wearing NBA veteran Langston Galloway’s Ethics the Brand during a shootaround. Ultimately, nothing materialized, likely due to those companies’ inability to scale production to match Irving’s global presence, performance needs, and his team’s capabilities.
“We talked to a ton of independent brands and realized that there’s a lot that we didn’t know and understand,” said Irving’s agent and stepmother, Shetellia Riley Irving. “It costs a lot to do a shoe. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially a performance shoe. Design is one thing, but so is understanding the orthopedics of the foot and making sure that we just have the right people.”
“I’m looking for a home where I can build a huge marketplace and I can have some ownership and that takes time to build,” Irving said of his ideal next sneaker deal during a news conference in December 2022. “I’m definitely not going to go back into a similar contract that I was in or any similar situation or circumstance that I was in at the other brand.”
Oshea figured he had the home Irving was looking for.
Sam Hodde/Getty Images
While Anta had made some ripples by signing a handful of NBA players, including four-time NBA champion Klay Thompson, the chance to catch Irving would help them make a bigger splash.
“Geoff and I were just walking down the street to the gym at lunchtime to shoot hoops, and we saw on social media kind of what had just happened with [Irving] with the other brand,” Oshea said, saying that he heard multiple dozens of brands reached out to Irving. “So we sat down immediately at the first table we could stumble across, and we called his team and let him know we’re still here.”
In July 2023, the sides agreed to a five-year deal and the company named Irving its chief creative officer, where he will “also seek to recruit basketball players, independent brands, influential figures in pop culture, artists, musicians, pioneers in environmentalism, trailblazers in humanitarianism and designers to also collaborate with him to create additional product lines under Kyrie’s signature line” according to a news release.
“It felt a little surreal this summer being able to negotiate a shoe deal of the magnitude I have,” Irving said in September 2023, stressing that his management team emphasized having creative control in his next deal. “I can basically sign my peers and also negotiate favorable terms that I know the industry is not offering anybody else.”
Deas suspects that seeing his peers in lead design roles also played a big role.
Anta
“When we were courting him, he saw our team, a majority Black design studio, that had to play some part,” Deas said about why Irving may have chosen the company. He also credits Anta’s vertical business model, where owning their factories and 7,000-plus stores in China made it more capable of creating and moving products and turning this shoe around in just six months. “He felt comfortable. Music was pumping, people were talking smack. It was like a real familiar environment for him to absorb and take in.”
“I think that helped, but it was the passion,” Riley Irving said. “I think we saw a group of people who were superpassionate about what they were building even before there was Kyrie. This was more than a job. They were bought into what they were really trying to build at the end of the day.”
Oshea wanted to give everyone a shot at designing Irving’s Anta debut. Every in-house designer on the U.S. and China teams submitted designs, including himself. With roughly 16 submissions to choose from, Irving chose Subawon’s design.
“I was actually blown away because I thought he’d take some time to digest them all and probably come back to us and say, ‘ Maybe this part of this design can work with this design,’ ” Subawon said. “But he said, ‘No, that’s it right there. Congratulations, these are my signatures.’ It took me a minute for it to really kick in and register.”
“Every shoe was absolutely phenomenal, so it was a hard choice,” Riley Irving said. “What made him choose this silhouette versus that silhouette? I can’t answer that. I just know that I was like, not one shoe was a bad shoe. If you think the KAI 1s are sick, wait until you get into the 2s. It’s gonna turn everything upside down.”
“Geoff and I want to build them up so that they’re the next Virgil Abloh, the next Jerry Lorenzo, the next Salehe Bembury,” Oshea said of the design team. “These are some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever met, and they deserve the opportunity to show the world what they’re going to create creatively.”
Within hours of the 6 p.m. launch, most sizes were sold out, with some customers inquiring about shoes on display. Simultaneously, Anta’s social media feeds were bombarded with complaints that the website’s stock sold out in seconds.
“Sneakerheads have always wanted to appear like they’re looking for something different on their feet, like they want something nobody else has,” said Weartesters sneaker reviewer and Dallas-Fort Worth resident Bryan Hinkle, who was one of the first to walk out of Sneaker Politics with a pair of Kai 1s. He emphasized that he’s been a fan of Anta’s design team members for years and this is not the first shoe he bought from the company. “Anta right now is unique. Nobody’s heard of them in the U.S., for the most part. There is a consumer movement out there that’s kind of just tired of those [retro] designs and looking for something else.” With a restock likely and more colorways and apparel dropping in the future, Irving and Anta will give people plenty of incentive to stand in line or wait online for sneakers again.
