Nike Adds Miami Heat to LeBron 9 Shoe

The Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks will reprise their NBA Finals matchup from last season on Christmas Day, the first day of this shortened NBA season. The Heat will likely get to watch the Mavs celebrate their Finals victory again before they tipoff their new season.

LeBron James, who says that it took him two or three weeks to start coming out of his depression after the Finals, isn’t going to enjoy the show too much.  Something he will likely enjoy is the launch of a special design for his ninth signature shoe with Nike, the LeBron 9, which is slated for release on Dec. 31st.

The Huffington Post reports that Nike is putting a little bit of Miami flavoring in the $170 shoe by commissioning locally-flavored art from one of the city’s coolest artists, Alvaro Ilizarbe, who goes by the name Freegums, for one version of the shoe.

“Known for his intricate black-and-white work, Freegums created a hypnotic pattern which appears in the sneakers' lining as well as on the exterior in a white-on-white design,” HuffPo reports. The intense design contains palm trees, suns, royal lions, gators, and sharks, as seen above: “There's even a yeti driving an airboat flying a Freegums flag alongside three Everglades spirits.”

As Freegums posted on his blog, where he shared the images you see here:

"I created a pattern for a version of the new Lebron 9′s basketball shoe with Nike. I am very honored to have worked and repped Miami for this project. The theme behind the pattern was Miami x Lebron. There are different Miami staples in the pattern as well as Lebron cues. My work can be seen on the lining of the shoe and on the outside white areas of the shoe (a white on white treatment)."

Freegums also ut his design on five wooden boxes for the Nike pre-release party earlier this month, keeping one for him and giving others to  the Nike archive, James, and Shoe Gallery, the location of the party. The fifth was raffled off at the party.