The Shape Of Things

To Come?

With their second signature shoe for

Kevin Garnett AND 1 has eschewed the safe road and taken

some risks. Some will love it and some won't, but I don't think that anyone will say that the KG II

is an uninteresting shoe.

One quick follow-up on the offset lacing system; I encountered a problem related to it, but, strangely, it only affected me on my second test wearing. As noted above, the first row of hidden eye-stays (the one closest to the toes) is set wide. Because of this, the stays for that row are located much deeper within the inner of the shoe than usual -- so far, in fact, that they are not completely covered by the tongue. This leaves open the possibility that the eye-stays (or the stitching that links them to the inner) will chafe against the foot, and this is precisely what happened to me. I could feel the base of the eye-stays rubbing against the medial sides of my feet, though, again, only on my second wearing. Even then it wasn't bad, more just the sensation that there was something inside of my shoes than any real abrasion, but it was a distraction nonetheless. Why this only happened on my second wearing (out of a total of six) is a mystery to me. My third wearing involved an hour and a half of nearly non-stop full court action so I know that it wasn't because I took it easy on the shoes from that point on. It may have been that the upper simply needed to be broken in, though this doesn't explain why it wasn't a problem on my first wearing. Whatever the cause, this is something to look out for when trying on the shoe.