Interview by: Andres Carrillo
Last Sunday we were in attendance at James Harden’s “Imma Be A Star” Block Party which took place at his old middle school in the heart of Los Angeles, Audubon Middle School. The special event saw hundreds of kids from the community come together so play some hoops, eat some good food, and celebrate James Harden’s spectacular MVP season. Oh, and there was also a special appearance from rookie sensation Donovan Mitchell and live performances by Famous Dex and Rick Ross.
In the midst of all the festivities, adidas Basketball Senior Director of Footwear, Rashad Williams was kind enough to give us some of his time and we took the the opportunity to ask him about James Harden’s signature line with the three stripes, the reasoning behind creating an “LS” version of his signature shoe, and the Harden MVP Collection.
Kicks On Fire: How heavily are you involved in designing James Harden’s signature shoes?
Rashad Williams: I’m the Senior Director of Footwear for adidas Basketball so I work closely with design. I’m involved from the very beginning (I can say that) all the way through.
Kicks On Fire: What about James Harden, is he heavily involved as well?
Rashad Williams: Absolutely 100%. He’s heavily involved. He’s involved from the very beginning to the very end of the shoe. The way we usually do it is we start off a whole process with him. We ask him “Hey what are the things you wanna see in your next shoe?” The goods, the bads. And then we make sure we try to check in hopefully around four times throughout the entire process.
Kicks On Fire: How much time does it usually take to design a shoe?
Rashad Williams: So we usually work with 18-24 months in advance so for example when the Harden Vol. 2 was barely coming out we had already started working on the Vol. 3. So it takes a lot of time with James’ schedule between you know playing in the NBA and then also trying to get all the input that’s needed, it takes a very long time.
Kicks On Fire: So we know the adidas Harden LS 2 is going to be unveiled soon (this interview took place the day before the shoe released in the MVP Collection), what’s the reasoning behind creating an LS version of the Harden instead of directly going straight into the Harden Vol. 3?
Rashad Williams: First, adidas is all about combining culture and sport, and James epitomizes that. So if you think about it he’s great on-court but also has the swag and style off court. And that was the whole idea around the LS. LS stands for life story, so James really wants to tell his journey throughout his entire journey. From being here at Audobon, where it all started, to now being on the NBA floor.
Kicks On Fire: What are some of the details/features that you can give us about the adidas Harden LS 2?
Rashad Williams: So we actually have two different versions of the LS 2. We have one version that is actually a Buckle version and then we have a lace version. The Buckle version is inspired by James’ senior year at Artesia High School and the Lace version is inspired by his freshman year at Arizona.
The approach was, James tells us this great story around his senior year was his battle year in high school. So their whole goal was to win the state championship. So our approach was you can look at the LS where we took all these raw materials (leathers, suedes, and textiles) representing James’ raw skill during that time. And the shoe has this military approach. So that’s why the buckle is kinda heavy. If you look at the details of the shoe we have this writing that’s inspired by James’ statistics during his senior year; I think he averaged 18.8 points, 7.9 rebounds, and like 6.9 assists or something close to that. So you’ll see this kind of military font with all this military coding and that was inspired by his mentality that they need to win the state championship and go to battle.
Kicks On Fire: Can you give us some early hints at some colorways we can expect to see on the Harden LS 2?
Rashad Williams: You can definitely expect some Artesia High inspired colorways, and you can expect just come colorways around his life. So you’ll see Artesia, you’ll see something that is a tribute to his friends, which they call themselves the Brothers Through Everything (BTE).
Kicks On Fire: What was the inspiration behind the Harden MVP Collection (which released the next day once Harden was announced league MVP).
Rashad Williams: The inspiration was to really celebrate James and in the pack we have three different models of James’ line, which is the Vol. 2, the BTE (which is the Brothers Through Everything) his tribute to his friends who they actually met here at Audubon, and then you have the Harden LS 2. So really just telling his life story, his journey. You’ll see some of those details in all the sockliners of each model, telling his story from Artesia, to Arizona State, to being drafted at OKC and winning the 6th Man Of The Year Award, to Houston (crossing our fingers and winning the MVP award.)
Kicks On Fire: Are the colorways on each shoe similar or different?
Rashad Williams: We wanted to give the consumers some fashion forward colors, so the colors are black and gold. We brought in black Boost which is very rare right now, and we actually took inspiration from LA, we mixed black, gold, and blue. Blue is taking inspiration from the street signs from Los Angeles. Then bringing in the gold from the trophy, and then grounding it in black which is one of James’ favorite colors. So it looks great and we’re pretty excited about it and just telling James’ story and celebrating the amazing season he had this year.
Kicks On Fire: We know the the adidas Harden Vol. 3 is already completed and will be releasing later this year, are there any hints you can give us about the shoe?
Rashad Williams: Ummm…it’s gonna be James’ third shoe and we’re really excited about it. That’s pretty much what I got right now.
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