Kevin Durant’s Nike KD 12 gets deconstructed.
The good folks over at FastPass.cn continue to do what they do best.
Split down the middle, you can see just how simple the KD 12 is, yet its on-court performance is enhanced in almost every way due to these subtle changes in manufacturing.
The one thing that sticks out the most to me in this image is just how low profile the forefoot of the KD 12 is while still providing cushion. This scenario is exactly what Zoom Air is all about and this may be one of the best uses of the cushion to date.
The Quad-Axial Flywire can be seen through the mesh overlay, but seeing it in its raw form is amazing. This is the most intricate part of the KD 12. With multiple layers and directions, each Flywire strand throughout the KD 12 build serves a purpose.
One of the more significant internal heel counters I’ve ever seen. Support hasn’t been perfect, but it has been very good, especially when directly compared to last years KD 11.
There’s no strobel board. Instead the Zoom Air serves dual purpose as both the shoe’s strobel board and also as the main source of cushion. This is one of the few times when Nike has had to make different sized Zoom Air units to accommodate the different sizes within the run. For every size made of the KD 12, including half sizes, there had to be a new Zoom Air unit made in order to effectively act as both strobel and cushion.
As described in the video review above, the full length Zoom Air found in the KD 12 is very similar to the Kyrie 5s Zoom Turbo.
The Zoom Air is also 7mm thick — very thick for an internal full length setup.
FastPass shows what a standard full length Zoom Air unit looks like next to the KD 12 cushion setup.
I love the Phylon setup. Even though they caged most of it for stability purposes, you’d never really know based on feel. Each hole allows for compression, compression that is lost due to the external cage setup. By allowing compression with this caged setup you get all the properties of Phylon with greater stability. It’s awesome.
The heel has a bottom loaded Hex Zoom Air unit. It’s a solid size in terms of thickness. Being bottom loaded makes it fairly insignificant. However, it will provide a bit more direct impact protection at the heel’s strike zone.
We hope you enjoyed taking a look under the hood of the Nike KD 12. Stay tuned for our performance review soon and let us know your thoughts on the KD 12 if you’ve been playing in them.
via FastPass.cn
Man, I love these deconstructed looks at performance shoe. It’s kinda like looking under the hood of a sports car, and seeing all the machinery inside. If you know your parts and your cars, you really come to appreciate all the work that goes into making that vehicle move. Same thing here with performance model sneakers. Really dig this. I thought the quad axial fly wire was a gimmick but seeing that layer was really something else.