XX9

Its been a while since my last blog post as the last month and a half have been crazy busy with work and moving house. But I'm back on top of things and have a bunch of stuff to blog about over the next couple of weeks. But way back at the end of March I spent a week in New York, and of course I spent a lot of time hunting for interesting sneakers, and the shoe I was particularly looking for was the Air Jordan XX9.

In February I wrote about how much I liked the XX9's that Russel Westbrook has been wearing, and my excitement for his debut Jordan brand signature shoe. However since then we found out that Russ's shoe is going to be a lifestyle shoe, and not a performance basketball shoe, which for me was really disappointing news, and made up my mind that I definitely wanted to get a pair of the XX9's.

I was very tempted by the white/silver All-Star colourway, but while visiting Flight Club I was able to find a pair of the legend blue/white/silver colour from the Gift of Flight pack. Flight Club is a consignment sneaker store, where for a fee they will sell your shoes, so have an incredible selection of rare and hard to find shoes. It was pretty impressive to see so many rare Jordans, LeBrons, and Yeezys, and even a pair of Freddy Kreuger SB dunks that are one of my all time grail shoes. I would definitely recommend visiting Flight Club just to see the array of amazing stuff they have.

The Ultimate Gift of Flight pack was a very limited pack that was released just before Christmas last year. It was made up of the XX9's and a pair of XI's in legend blue. Because XI's are so popular the pack was in huge demand and sold out instantly. However unlike most people who bought the pack for the XI's it was the XX9's that I'd wanted, especially as Russ wore that colour when the Thunder played on Christmas day. And luckily for me someone had decided to sell their XX9's separately from the pack, and because it's the shoe that's generally less popular I was able to get a super limited shoe at a great price.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I thought it was a shame that Nike never released one of the OKC Thunder colourways that Westbrook has been wearing, especially as the orange looks so great on them. However a trip to Nike town helped to solve this as I grabbed a pair of Nike Hyper Elite socks to go with them and give them the hit of orange they'd been missing. For anyone who plays basketball I'd definitely recommend the Nike Elite socks, they're incredibly comfortable and help to keep your feet feeling good during a hard game. I've played in the XX9 once so far, and I really loved them. The fit and traction were especially impressive, so much so that I'm really considering picking up another pair.