Performance Teaser: Air Jordan 8.0

Prior to the Jordan 2011 Q Flight Performance Review, here is a sneak peak as to how the Jordan 8.0 handles on court.




Traction- It looked good from the start. Herringbone is something that almost seems like a thing of the past. However, storytelling only goes so far on a shoe and in my personal opinion… storytelling should be left off the bottom of the shoe as nobody will really see it anyway.

So far, the traction has been great. I only experienced one point where I slipped and it wasn’t the shoes fault… the floor where our League games take place on are horrible. I ended up playing in them again the next night on regular wood floors and the traction was simply amazing.



Fit- If looks could kill… the Jordan 8.0 look incredibly bulky. Fortunately that is not the case. Being a high top shoe, this almost goes against what most performance shoes strive for nowadays. You would think they’d feel restricting yet they don’t.

One thing I will point out is that while they are high tops with straps, you still need to lace them up to the top eyelet. Only reason why I bring this up is because while breaking them in during my pre game warm up, I decided to keep them laced at the second to last eyelet (it is easier to get the shoe on and off if they are laced this way rather than all the way to the top) and leave the straps unfastened. This caused a ton of heel slip while moving around. I then strapped up the cross straps thinking that would solve the issue… I was wrong. Once I laced them up to the top, they were very secure and had no slipping at all.



The Flywire construction does exactly what we have come to expect from it, secure the foot in areas that leather, suede and nubuck cannot. It does this very well which makes wearing them feel as if you were wearing a shoe made for a Guard or Forward. Rapid movements and fast paced changes in direction don’t affect the shoes fit one bit. They have also become light enough that they just feel great while in transition. Factor in the straps and you have one of the best lockdown fitting sneakers we have had in quite some time.

That’s it for now, I will be going in for round three tonight and come back with another update soon.