Nike SB Sneaker
Which Nike SB gives off the strongest hype signal?
The Hypescore reads the signal strength of every Nike SB colorway. Community votes, resale movement, search demand and scarcity together decide how much hype a sneaker gives off, expressed in GSv. On the left the strongest hype signals, on the right the colorways just being picked up and rising fast.
About Nike SB
Nike SB: the division that had to learn to listen
Nike SB is not a model. The two letters stand for Skateboarding, and this is the page of a complete division — which is why versions of very different shoes appear together. The best-known members each have their own page: the Dunk SB (with separate pages for the Low and the High), the Stefan Janoski, the SB Blazer and the SB Bruin. This page shows the whole family in one place.
That Nike even had a skate division did not happen automatically. In the late nineties the brand tried to enter the skate world and was shunned — the scene saw a sports giant coming to take. The 2002 relaunch did the opposite. A small team under Sandy Bodecker started with the skate shops and the skaters themselves, and chose as a base a shoe skaters had long adopted on their own: the Dunk from 1985, flat, sturdy and full of grip. The very first SB Dunks appeared only at skate shops, in versions the team riders themselves had put together — the pro models of, among others, Gino Iannucci and Paul Rodriguez on this page come from that tradition.
Place the members side by side and you see they share almost nothing. On the SB Dunk the thick padded tongue sticks up like a collar above the lacing panel, and the insole contains a Zoom Air insert — the modifications that made the basketball shoe skate-ready in 2002. The Janoski is the exact opposite: flat and thin, with a swoosh embroidered into the suede instead of stitched on as a panel, on a vulcanized sole edge with a grainy texture. The SB Blazer largely leaves the 1970s silhouette alone. One family, three opposing answers to the same question: how does a shoe survive griptape, and how much do you want to feel your board.
The division became famous for something other than technique. The SB Dunk grew into the canvas of modern sneaker culture: collaborations with skate shops, musicians and artists, released in small runs, with queues at the store and a collector market as a result. Collectors even read the era of an SB Dunk from the box it’s in — the division changed the box color every few years, and with old pairs the cardboard counts. Meanwhile the main line stayed on the shelf: it’s a rare division that produces both a workhorse and an auction piece.
Those who skate roughly choose between two constructions. A cupsole like the one under the SB Dunk cushions landings and protects the foot; a vulcanized sole like under the Janoski bends more easily and gives direct contact with the board. That distinction is older than the division itself, but Nike SB is one of the few places where both schools coexist under one name.
On this page you can see which Nike SB versions are hottest now according to the Hypescore, from which price they’re available and in how many shops they are in stock.