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An Ode to the Kyrie 5 – And a Preview of the Kyrie 6

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The Kyrie 6 Preheat Collection. (Photo Credit: Nike)

Amid hype culture, limited runs, the resale market, and the need for shoes to often have positive performative qualities, something tends to get lost in today’s modern sneaker culture: sneakers should be fun.

Sneakers, both in the singular sense and the community that surrounds them, should be fun. It’s fun to find an exciting pair of shoes and wear them for the first time, to bask in the compliments and the, “Where’d you get those?!” questions from strangers. They should catch eyes and draw attention, and elevate outfits – and, when possible, they should be accessible to all.

Over the last year, there are few shoes that have injected as much pure fun into sneaker culture quite like the Kyrie 5, which is in its last few weeks of rotation as the Kyrie 6 prepares to drop (more on that later). It’s a shoe worth celebrating, both for its merits as a shoe and for what it has done for the sneaker world over the course of 2018 to 2019.

At the heart of the shoe is Kyrie Irving himself, the eccentric NBA All-Star who’s just as famous for being the weirdest basketball player alive as he is for his game. You probably know him as the guy who went on the record as kind of sort of maybe being a flat-earther a while back (he’s walked back on the comments and chalked them up to one too many midnight YouTube rabbit holes and honestly, whom among us has not, etc.). Irving is a proudly odd dude who has appeared in a way-better-than-it-should-be basketball movie based on a viral series of Pepsi ads he appeared in and used his Kyrie 4 signature shoe as an excuse to collaborate with his favorite cereal brands. He has the logo for the show Friends tattooed on his body, a decision so bad, I personally can’t help but respect how bold a move it is.

His signature shoes started out relatively conventional, but as the years have gone on, he’s used them as canvases for artistic expressions of his personality or strange array of interests. From the Kyrie 3 “Bruce Lee” (which also paid homage to a similar colorway of an old Kobe Bryant sneaker) to the aforementioned Cereal Pack, Irving quickly gained a reputation as having the strangest, most expressive shoes in basketball.

The Kyrie 5, which launched late last year, has proven the culmination of those eccentricities and ended up being by far his most memorable shoe yet. We’ve covered a variety of colorways the shoe has featured on the site this year, largely because the Kyrie 5 has ended up being the most pop culture-friendly shoe we’ve seen in ages. Spring saw the release of a colorway inspired by, yes, Friends, while the hottest basketball drop of the summer ended up being an expansive line of Irving’s sneakers in SpongeBob SquarePants colorways (the Squidward and Pineapple editions are locks for our Best Sneakers of the Year list).

Pop culture aside, Irving also based different Kyrie 5 colorways on some of his stranger interests, namely the lore surrounding conspiracy theories and outer space. One of the first colorways of the shoe features a navy blue upper and a vibrant multicolored Flytrap, strongly resembling the Northern Lights or a cosmic event (while the shoe is officially called the Kyrie 5 Multicolor, it soon took on the casual moniker of the “Galaxy”). It also came into play for his second Kyrie 5 released in collaboration with esteemed Boston store Concepts. The Kyrie 5 Orion’s Belt is one of the final colorways of the shoe and pays clear homage to his fascination with outer space (even if that fascination is likely connected to the fact that he probably thinks aliens are real).

His love of outer space and conspiracy theories merged for the Kyrie 5 “UFO,” appropriately released on 4/20 of this year. Adorned in outer space colors and spaceship logos, it’s a wild shoe that is more or less your freshman year roommate who smoked a lot of weed and talked about how, “You know, there must be SOMETHING else out there in the universe, yeah?” Illuminati lore and conspiracy theories are also the basis of the crown jewel of the Kyrie 5 line, that being the first Concepts joints from December 2018. Debuting in Irving’s Christmas Day game, the Kyrie 5 Ikhet is a stunning homage to Egyptian mythology and features beautiful colors and compelling iconography and hieroglyphics.

Irving’s shoes are the kind that easily stand out in a room. And the design of the 5 itself is an attention-grabber, from the sharp contour of the sole to the now-iconic Flytrap module through which the shoes’ laces are run. It’s already a legendary pair of shoes and the vibrant series of colorways released over the last year has only made it all the more memorable. Crucially, the 5 has also included regular releases in children’s’ sizing and incorporated colors and iconography that younger sneakerheads might find more familiar. Paired with the low price point of $130 (with a few exceptions), it’s made cool sneakers accessible to families and fans who may not be able to afford a $200 pair of Air Jordans.

The Kyrie 5 will be missed, but in its place comes the Kyrie 6, which debuted this week with a bang. Featuring a design that draws heavily from the iconic Air Yeezy 2 (a favorite of Irving’s), the shoe will be debuting in an exciting line called the “Preheat” Collection ahead of the shoe’s wide release on Nov. 22 in a standard black colorway. The Preheat Collection consists of 11 shoes designed to commemorate 11 cities Irving loves. The line features bright color blocking and pattern-mixing as well as a metallic gold strap or two. Each shoe is covered in Irving’s now-signature All-Seeing Eye logos as well.

There’s no telling where the Kyrie 6 will go over the next year, though it feels safe to say, “somewhere weird.” It’s going to be an exciting ride. Still, before hopping on, it only feels right to give one last bit of love to the Kyrie 5, a shoe devoid of pretention that reminded a whole lot of people of the fact that sneakers are pretty fun.

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