Vince Carter joined Nike in 2000. He was already well-known for a few things: highlight reel-filling dunks and a torrid scoring touch. Combined, these elements propelled Carter toward super-stardom.
Carter debuted the Nike Shox BB4 during summer play in Sydney. It proved to be the perfect storm of sneaker, performance and world stage. An iconic dunk of death over a seven-footer while wearing a pair secured his legendary status and drove home the power of the Nike Shox system. You can’t synthesize that kind of moment, but maybe, just maybe, those columns gave him the confidence to pull off the ultimate “posterized” dunk.
“The success of the dunk started the legend of the shoes. But I myself went to another level with them, too. I became a star player in the BB4,” Carter says.
For Carter, the BB4 made immediate sense. He saw how it connected to his game, anticipating how the design, the performance and the associated commercials all would combine to create a moment in history.
“Getting the opportunity to debut a new technology was a no-brainer to me. It made sense with how I played,” says Carter.
His flare for the unimaginable, that dunk in Sydney, put it over the top.
Carter will wear the Nike Shox BB4 during the rest of the NBA season, an ode to the era that positioned his status as an icon and one where he made players around the globe believe that they, too, could take off.
