Big Baller Brand’s launch of Lonzo Ball’s first signature shoe, the ZO2’s, was a bumpy ride, to say the least. The outrageous $495 – $995 price tag, depending on the model you were looking for, only begins to scratch the surface of how BBB botched the release.
Of course, if you asked LaVar Ball about it, you’d likely hear about how amazing the sales were, or how great the sneakers are, but that’s LaVar Ball. I won’t knock him for the hustle, either. Big Baller Brand is clearly pulling in a lot of money from somewhere, and LaVar deserves some credit for that.
Lonzo Ball’s original ZO2’s never actually released. Instead, Big Baller Brand announced that anyone that ordered the original ZO2’s would be receiving a pair of ZO2: Prime Remix’s instead. At the time, there were a lot of rumors floating around about how and why Big Baller Brand scrapped the original ZO2’s, and now, thanks this report from GQ, we finally know what happened behind-the-scenes.
During production of the ZO2: Prime Remix, Big Baller Brand dropped some photos of LaMelo Ball’s first signature shoe, the Melo Ball 1, on August 31st. It didn’t take internet investigators long to realize that the Melo Ball 1’s looked an awful lot like a shoe called Rare Metal by the apparel company, Brandblack. If you’re unfamiliar with sneaker companies, this might be a little hard to follow, but Brandblack is a subsidiary of the sneaker giant, Sketchers.
Brandblack founder David Raysse and creative director Billy Dill opened up a design consultant firm named ‘Santa Ana’ in August of 2017, the same month that Big Baller Brand announced the Melo Ball 1’s, which has all the nuts and bolts of a Brandblack shoe. Raysse and Dill would later confirm the speculation, but they didn’t even have too. By this point, it was clear that Big Baller Brand was working closely with Santa Ana, which has an immediate relation to Brandblack, which has an immediate relation to Skechers. If you remove all the confusion and peel back the curtain, Big Baller Brand shoes are made possible by Skechers.
The insane cost of production for a truly independent sneaker company like the one Big Baller Brand was valiantly trying to portray is what ultimately led to Big Baller Brand sourcing their shoes through Santa Ana. Big Baller Brand found that out the hard way, and thus, the original ZO2’s were replaced by something they could produce by their promised release date with the help from Santa Ana, Brandblack, and Skechers.
If you didn’t like the ZO2: Prime Remix’s, though, we’ve got some good news for you. According to Raysse and Dill, Big Baller Brand would not budge on the ZO2: Prime Remix’s release date, and that’s why aspects of the shoe closely resemble other Brandblack products. Big Baller Brand is going to continue working with Raysee and Dill, however, and they are making a bold prediction about Lonzo Ball’s next signature shoe.
“If I may be so bold, it is … F*CKING … FIRE,” Raysse told GQ when asked about Lonzo’s next shoe. Of course Raysse is going to say that, but regardless of what’s hype and what’s real, we can’t wait to see what this thing looks like.
