It’s Kyrie Irving; obviously he wasn’t going to break up with Nike and that’s it. There were going to be some pearls. We already have, for the moment, the first one.
First of all, breaking with your sponsor does not implicitly prohibit you from continuing to wear their brand. In this case, wearing his Nike Kyrie 3 ‘Raygun’. For obvious reasons of comfort and performance, continuing to wear a shoe that your foot is already molded to is argument enough not to change models from one day to the next.
But it’s Kyrie. Breastfeeding and crying often go hand in hand. This time, the double-sided tweet had a total of 32 characters and was printed on a couple of pieces of black adhesive tape, turning the Raygun’s RED/BLACK/ORANGE into a single-color shoe.
The message?
- Aside: «I am free Thank you God … I am»
- The other: «Logo here»
Did you settle for this? No, games in the NBA are long and more than one tantrum fits inside.
At half-time he exchanged shoes, and it is that there was a marker to amortize. She came out of the locker room with another blue pair, with the logos crossed out and colored in black and a pair of bows drawn as a sign of mourning (there are rumors that since Just Stop Oil they have already contacted him as plan designer to put you in front of your next protest).
‘Crematistic relief’
Since he was invited, and he agreed, to board his ship in 2011, when Rookie of the Year in the NBA, Irving has pocketed around 10 million per year, or what is the same, an approximate total of 125 million dollars for being one of the main faces of the American brand in the sports footwear section. The agreement broken almost twelve years later, the Nets player celebrates it as a ‘release’.
One can imagine that the noose of the multinationals, even after having loosened a bit with this divorce, must still be quite tight around his neck and he will soon shelve some of his other sponsors, including Pepsi, Footlocker, Panini, Skullcandy or 2K Sports as the most representative SMEs.
The Nike podium
Jokes aside, we’re now wondering if Irving – whose various sneaker releases (several of them among the brand’s most expensive) have sold really well – will be tempted into striking a new deal with some of the other brands that dominate or seek to gain a foothold in the basketball market.
It seems unlikely to imagine it in Adidas, the other great colossus, where they already have overbooked bases under contract (James Harden, Derrick Rose, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell and Trae Young). In Under Armour, on the contrary, ‘only’ Joel Embiid and Stephen Curry are at the forefront of their NBA-themed marketing. sneakersso signing Irving (wayward sells) could be an option.
Puma, the German brand in which Jay-Z is creative director, made LaMelo Ball its flagship with the intention of breaking the prevailing oligopoly in the sector. Convincing Irving (that Power Point must be worth gold) to join the company would be a huge coup on the table.
But while some (or none) of this happens, let’s see who is still in the Nike family, which in itself must be narrated in the form of a matryoshka. Air Jordan, although they are not strictly sold as the same thing, is one of Nike’s chicks, or rather, his goose that lays the golden eggs; Luka Doncic, Zion Williamson, Chris Paul, Jayson Tatum and Russell Westbrook, among others, belong to said ‘sub-brand’.
If we refer to Nike without intricacies, then we have to talk about LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Paul George and Giannis Antetokounmpo. But no one comes close to the one true king. One who doesn’t even need to play to occupy the throne. Although this Forbes image is from 2019, its numbers hold true. 130 million a year for Michael Jordan without stepping on the parquet. Far above the best paid of the Nike brand and any other (Curry y Under Armour: 20M. Harden y Adidas: 14M. Zion y Nike: 13M).
Irving: where ‘we’ really care
Kyrie Irving has been one more lucrative page in the history of a brand that does not alter its course in the slightest after the break. Of guard of the Nets, whose every tweet is an adventure, what matters most to us here is their performance on the pitch; writing headlines at the expense of their performances and not their statements.
Against the Hornets, the night of the tape, he scored 33 points, gave 9 assists and put 4 blocks. The Nets have won 5 of their last six games with him on the court. The point guard is performing at a stellar level, which is normal for him, and now they are finally beginning to accompany the victories.
And it is that with Irving the parquet is usually impregnated with lime and almost never with sand, which he reserves for other fields and meadows.
(Cover photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
