Nike Jordan Basketball shoes “You learn from every project that you do, but I can’t think of many other projects where we learned so much.”-?Tracy TeagueMost people today would look at a Nike shoe equipped with a 360 Air Unit such as the current Nike Air Max 90 and Nike LeBron 9 Low and would think that it’s old news compared to the lightweight LunarLon technology. The Nike Air Max 360 Basketball paved the way for the endless of Nike models that are equipped with the popular 360 Air Max cushioning. The thermoforming technology allowed sneakers to be made without foam. It became so popular that the new outsole tooling made the transition from basketball shoes to the running category. Check out the paragraphs below or the rest of the history on the popular 360 Air Max unit.Click through the gallery for a closer look at the blueprints and OG pairs below.While the game of basketball was certainly evolving into a faster, up-and-down game, there was still a player who earned his paycheck with his back to the basket and under the boards. Max Air was always the platform?for those athletes who appreciated some assistance on their return to terra firma. In basketball, footwear has to accommodate a 200-plus pound athlete with upwards of 2,000 pounds of force on his feet upon landing. That’s some serious force.Dating back to the first glimpse of Visible Air in 1988’s Nike Air Revolution, ballers would peer through the bigger and bigger windows all the way through the Uptempo line’s evolution Cheap Nike Air Max 90. And over the years, hundreds of different Air Sole units were created for maximum impact protection for the big guys.Nike Air is the most researched and studied innovation in Nike’s history. It was, and still is, the benchmark. But the one limitation for designers is that Nike Air always needs to be encapsulated in foam because the upper needs to be attached to the air bag somehow.With the advent of the Nike Air Max 360 Air Sole, it was finally possible to create a shoe without foam, thus letting a player ball entirely on air. Utilizing thermoforming technology (versus blow-molding), Nike engineers created a smoother surface at the top of the Air Sole unit to attach it more securely to the upper. While foam has the benefit of an added cushioning tool, foam also compresses over time. So its removal meant longer-lasting consistent cushioning.“In some ways, the Nike Air Max 360 was really our first Air Max shoe,” said Tom Hartge Nike Air Max 90 Women, Creative Director for Advanced Initiatives.While it was 25 years in the making, the original Nike Air Max 360 Air Sole was created for the running category. Behind the scenes, a brief to apply a variation of the Nike Air Max 360’s running bag to a basketball shoe created multiple challenges. Engineers scrutinized the cage to evolve it from linear movement to the lateral movement demands of basketball. Pillar placement necessitated extra alterations as well in order to ensure support where it mattered.Where the 360 project really excelled was in instigating even more specific basketball-centric innovation along similar lines. The Nike LeBron 7’s carefully-honed Max application, free of obstructions, was created on the 360 assignment’s learnings to reinforce Nike Basketball’s dominance. 360 Air Max Shoes, Nike 360 Air Max, Nike Air Max 360 Basketball, Nike Air Max 360 Basketball Shoes