About

Nike Air Force

In 1982 Nike put an air chamber into a basketball shoe. Bruce Kilgore designed it, the name came from Air Force One — the US president’s plane — and it was the first basketball shoe with Nike Air under the heel and midfoot. Exactly where a landing hits hardest.

Look at the sole, not the upper

The upper is deliberately restrained: clean leather, a perforated toe for ventilation, a Swoosh on the panel. The invention is underneath. The cupsole is built from one piece of rubber and carries a circular pattern under the ball of the foot — the pivot circle, meant to allow turning on parquet without your sole catching. That detail is still there more than forty years later, while almost nobody wears this shoe on a court anymore.

Invented twice

Nike stopped production in 1984, and that should have been the end of the story. In Baltimore a few retailers refused to go along. They kept ordering, got Nike to produce again and were allowed to assemble their own versions — the start of what would be called the Color of the Month. That way a written-off basketball shoe became the longest-running model in the catalogue. In New York it meanwhile picked up a second name: Uptowns.

One name, multiple beasts

Air Force is no longer a single model. The Air Force 1 Low is what most people mean; the Air Force 1 Mid retains the ankle strap of the original high; the Air Force 1 Shadow doubles layers and Swooshes into an exaggerated version of itself. The Air Force Max and the Air Force 270 pull the name toward visible Air and a completely different ride. Same family name, very different beasts.

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