How Converse Used Its History to Create the Basketball Shoe of the Future

Imagine a basketball game played in 1917. Scrawny players wear a uniform consisting of a sad-looking tank-top and...a belt? A belt! Necessary to keep up those shorts—made out of canvas, of course, as polyester and satin shorts were introduced in the ‘30s. The shorts end around the upper thigh—not a problem since players are in long socks that almost reach the knee. These knuckleheads in belted short-shorts and ratty tank tops are running around the court wearing white high-top canvas sneakers with the circular emblem of Converse on the side: the brand’s Chuck Taylor All Star, the first shoe made for basketball, debuted in 1917.

More than a hundred years later, almost everything about that scene has changed: players wear sleek uniforms made out of fabrics from the future and signature shoes with all the fixings necessary to contain all 250 pounds of LeBron James. And while the Chuck Taylor is still blindingly popular, the Converse logo hasn’t been seen on an NBA court since 2012. But the brand is hoping to change that with the first shoe designed as part of its reborn basketball program: the All Star Pro BB.

“This is a dream project,” says Thomas Bell, Sr., a senior innovator at Nike who worked on the latest Converse.”Obviously, there's a lot of pressure to deliver but the original Chuck... I can’t think of any other product we use on a daily basis that is 100-plus years old. As a designer you always want your product to have longevity. It's quite impossible to do something like that.” The Pro BB, out next month, is a handsome shoe—NBA players could do (and have done) a lot worse than Converse’s new model. And the Pro BB, while not an exact replica of the iconic Chuck Taylor, smells strongly of its predecessor, pulling the Chuck firmly into the future. The shoes share the same clean white upper, but the Pro BB trades the Chuck’s gentle sloping upper for something more angular. Instead of the patriotic red-white-and-blue synonymous with the All Star, the Pro BB dials up “mandarin” orange—a bright shade born for the spotlight of TNT games and House of Highlights GIFs.

The most noticeable difference between the Pro BB and the Chuck is Converse added the newer “star chevron” (the point of an arrow next to a star) logo. “We're really pulling from the purity and simplicity and purposefulness of what that product represented,” says Eric Avar, creative director of Nike innovation. That makes the Pro BB a nice contrast to shoes in 2019 that come loaded with every bell and whistle. That includes some of the super-chunky and wild shoes, like the ERX, in Converse's own catalog. The Pro BB is deceptively pared down. “It looks so lightweight and simple people don’t believe it's going to perform,” Avar adds.

All that extra white space is there by design, though. Converse hopes wearers will do what they’ve done with the Chuck for decades and scribble, doodle, and customize the hell out of this shoe. More broadly, the dream is that the shoe will continue Converse’s legacy another 100 years. “Somewhere deep down in our hearts that might be a goal,” Avar says. And the brand has geared up to make it happen.

Converse announced it was getting back into basketball all the way back in November with forward Kelly Oubre, Jr., then with the Washington Wizards. Converse was so unconcerned with rushing its shoe out that between that announcement and this one, Oubre was traded to the Phoenix Suns. In the interim, Oubre wore Converse off the court but played in shoes from Nike, Converse’s parent company.

Oubre’s Suns didn’t qualify for the playoffs, so Converse is putting out the first shoe of its new era knowing it won’t see any professional game action until next season’s tipoff. It’s a risky move, but one that signals how much all the stuff outside the NBA is really what’s important to the brand. “Sport, culture, fashion, style, music—all those are so intertwined today and consumers as well as athletes live in all those dimensions,” says Brandis Russell, Converse’s VP of global footwear.

Converse’s plan reveals how important it is for large sneaker brands to be involved with basketball. Despite industry data that says sales of basketball shoes are down, Converse, along with Puma and New Balance, have all launched basketball programs in the past year. That’s down to one reason: the NBA is a cultural powerhouse. The sport and its players are influential well beyond the confines of the arena. They’re style icons, music producers, actors, rappers, amateur scaffolding experts, memes, and sometimes multiple defensive Twitter users at once. A sneaker brand working with a player gets much more than 48 minutes of on-court visibility.

Russell emphasizes that this isn’t just about selling shoes: “What you’ll also see is that coming back into basketball isn't just on the performance side. It's also offcourt as well.” The NBA doesn’t need to be in season for Converse to profit off its involvement in the sport. The new program opens up opportunities for Converse to work with people in the world of basketball and bring back some of its classic models, like the classic Pro Leather.

For now, though, the main focus is the Pro BB. The silhouette of the shoe is so recognizable that unbranded versions of the sneaker given to wear testers sparked interest from players: “We consistently had athletes asking us, ‘Is this a modern-day Chuck?’” says Avar.

When asked if any of those curious athletes might wear the Pro BB in the NBA come November, Russell tells me, “It is safe to assume we will be focused on making sure we've got a great roster of ambassadors for our brand that speak to the multi facets of basketball culture.” Asked what that means, Russell simply teases, “More to come.”

But maybe that’s beside the point, anyway. While Converse’s Chuck Taylor started on the court, it’s found the most success well beyond basketball. The team at Converse will know the Pro BB is a success not when it appears on the ambassadors its paid to wear the shoe during NBA play but when it starts cropping up everywhere else. “That's when we truly win, right?” says Damion Silver, Converse footwear’s associate creative director. “When you get an icon that can be worn with everything just like the Chuck Taylor itself. If it's that good, it goes with everything, no questions asked.”