"Waiting 11 years, I might be the, the oldest player to ever have their first signature shoe"
NBA Champion Jeremy Lin has become the first Asian-American to release a signature basketball shoe.
The Xtep JLIN ONE comes in six colour ways and will be released through the Xtep website. Xtep is China’s top company for shoes.
In an unboxing video, Lin revealed the shoe and the background behind the product.
“Growing up, I’ll pretty much only have one pair of shoes at a time,” the 32-year-old said. “But ever since I went to the NBA since then my love for sneakers and my collection has definitely grown.”
Speaking about Xtep, the former Beijing Ducks star said, “I hadn’t even heard of the company. And after taking a meeting and doing a little bit of research I found out that accept is the number one running shoe company in China and they also are really big into fashion, but they wanted to move into basketball, and they had never done basketball before. And for me that was really really intriguing to be able to create something brand new.”
Showing the shoe to the camera, Lin showcased the main blue colour way. “These are the water shoes that represent walking on water. There’s water elements everywhere. And if you look at the bottom two it’s like the ripples of the water, and, and, you know, one unique thing that they did is on the back of this one they have the logo but on the other one. ”
Lin explained that the J logo enraptures the number 1 and number 11. “They have the number one, which represents the J one,” he said. “But if you look carefully, there’s a line down the middle and it’s actually two ones, which also represent represents the 11th year of professional basketball that I finally got a signature shoe. This number right here kind of represents three things is the JLIN ONE is my basketball number and it’s also my 11th year of professional basketball.”
“You see the ones in different places and, and you see the different elements of water, all through the shoe with my first signature shoe the main story, I wanted to tell is our slogan which is nothing stops me.”
The Taiwanese American went on to say that he is the first Asian American to have their own shoe but also might best the oldest.
“It just really looked like I was never going to have my own signature shoe. Waiting 11 years, I might be the, the oldest player to ever have their first signature shoe,” he said. “And I’m the first Asian American to have my own signature basketball shoe and so I guess the nothing stopped me mentality is about the persistence and the perseverance that maybe had to wait longer than expected.”
Lin is set to return to the NBA by playing for Golden State’s G League affiliate Santa Cruz Warriors.
In other sports news, 17-year-old Asian American Eileen Gu has become the first Chinese athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter X Games in Colorado.