The Nike Ja 4 High "Zombie" bucks the trend of basketball largely moving away from high-tops.
High-top sneakers have been out of vogue for quite some time in performance basketball, and Nike hasn’t made a pair for one of its signature athletes since the launch of the LeBron 19 five years ago. Bucking the trend soon, however, will be a new build for Ja Morant’s latest model.
The Nike Ja 4 High “Zombie” has been confirmed for a late-October release with official images to match after word of the sneaker first leaked in September. A bright red shroud with pyramidal protrusions covers the shoe from the midsole up to the ankle with the words “Call Twelve” running along the zipper. Left alone is the shark fin-like midfoot shank with a Swoosh next to it to form an abstract “Ja” spell-out, which now appears with a gunmetal-like finish as one of the few departures from red.
Alongside the high-top, Morant’s annual “Zombie” theme will also come through more overtly on the Ja 4’s regular low-top build. Both, however, will come with the same mask of the player as a zombie and an insole that gives another rendering of the same idea.
Prior to the release of the Kobe Bryant’s Nike Kobe 4 in 2008, conventional wisdom held that high-tops were necessary in basketball in order to adequately support the ankles. Bryant’s line continued to buck the notion through subsequent models, paving the way for low-tops to become the norm as they are today.
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