A Closer Look at the Nike LeBron 12 Colorways

Quietly assembled in an auditorium inside its Beaverton headquarters, the basketball world marveled as Nike unveiled its latest, greatest innovations in the Nike LeBron 12. The precedent was set before the presentation even begun; a season that included dramatics from the publicly unworn 11th release and ended in the effective deconstruction of a Florida dynasty did well to cut out Nike’s impending work.

The key difference between this and the last release is the introduction of Hex Zoom Air. Drawing on ‘nature’s perfect shape,’ the Nike Sports Research Lab did away with a full-length Zoom Air midsole, instead opting to create six individual ‘mini-bags’ attuned with the foot’s natural articulation. Described by Nike designers as a kind of “[Nike] Free for basketball,” Hex Zoom Air allows for precise impact absorption – a key ingredient in a shoe designed for a player with a 40+ inch vertical.

Nike complimented LeBron’s input by redesigning the shoe’s upper. Gone is the armored, warrior-esque design language of the canon, eschewed in favor of another new technology – Megafuse. Megafuse cuts down on the necessary layers of the upper, using a composite synthetic ‘booty’ that molds to the player’s foot over time.

An innately more handsome shoe off the bat, the LeBron 12 will be offered in a variety of colorways, with each storyline focused on an aspect of his player personality. Accordingly, the “Reflexology” colorway references the body’s six meridians as emphasized by ancient Chinese medicine, while the “Dunk Force” makes a military assertion on LeBron’s near-superhuman tomahawk dunk. Beginning with the O.G. “NSRL,” look for versions of this exciting basketball shoe to drop starting October 11.