About

Adidas Harden: ten parts of individuality

When James Harden signed with adidas in 2015, it was a statement from the brand to the basketball market — and the shoe line that followed at the end of 2016 became the proof. The Harden Vol 1 opened a series that now stretches to Volume 10, and on this page nearly all those generations are shown together. The title lists the volume; so anyone looking for a specific generation should read the number.

The line carries its namesake’s playing style in the details. Take the Vol 4: on the plastic anchor where the laces run through, VOL. 4 is printed, the lace closure visibly pulls off-center toward the outside of the shoe, and the sole wall is faceted like crumpled paper — angular and unpredictable, like the stepback move with which Harden froze defenders. That the move also became a shoe name is visible in the titles: the Stepback series is the accessible sideline alongside the main volumes.

The early volumes leaned on Boost cushioning, later generations switched to the lighter Lightstrike — the series thus nicely shows how adidas basketball shifted over ten years from maximum cushioning to maximum speed. For clarity: these are real performance shoes, built for the court — and older volumes are therefore a quiet find for anyone looking for a technical sneaker for the street.

The Harden line has company: Damian Lillard’s Dame line is the sibling line within the same brand, and anyone who wants to understand the genre should look at Nike Kobe and the Air Jordan 1 — the shoe with which the idea of a player-specific line originally began.

On this page you can see which versions of the Adidas Harden are currently hottest according to the Hypescore, the starting price at which they can be found and in how many shops they are in stock.