James Harden (above photo) is wearing a PE (player edition) of his own signature shoe, the Adidas Harden Vol. 8. I didn’t see that this had its own name so I’m going to call it the Harden Vol. 8 “Barney,” because it is puffy and purple, and I was instantly sick of seeing it and him and kind of basketball in general. Maybe this colorway is a nod to his time in Houston and some of its residents’ proclivity for purple drank? Probably not. But maybe? Might also call these the Rob Liefelds after the Deadpool comic artist who couldn’t draw feet.
Tim Hardaway Jr. is wearing a PE version of the Jordan Tatum 1s, the Jordan Brand signature for Boston’s Jayson Tatum. As near as I can tell, they take at least some of their inspiration from the early 1990s colorways of the Nike Air Raid, the shoe his dad was the face (the foot?) of, starring in Spike Lee-directed commercials and so on. This continues THJ’s late-season tribute to his pop, in which he has been playing every game as if he is a 57-year-old. I’m going to call this colorway the Jordan Tatum 1 “Ordell Robbie” (for the scene in Jackie Brown in which Samuel Jackson’s character asks Luis, his friend and former literal partner in crime, “What happened to you, man? Your ass used to be beautiful.”).