The newest NBA player to join the select group with their own signature sneaker is Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell. The second-year star out of Louisville had his signature shoe with adidas, the D.O.N. Issue #1, unveiled officially on Thursday morning.
The sneaker will release some time in 2019 along with a line of apparel, featuring a new Spida logo that’s genuinely one of the best logos created for a player in years — mainly because it’s not just some clever combination of his initials. Mitchell’s new signature model, like Damian Lillard’s, will not include BOOST in the midsole because, like Dame, Mitchell wants his sneaker to be more accessible on the market, as he told two aspiring sports writers from Greenwich Day School in the story for the sneaker’s release.
“Well, I think the accessibility will be a lot different, Mitchell said. “We obviously have the Hardens, the Dames and others, but for me, I wanted the shoe to be accessible to all people, both price-wise and color-wise, and I wanted everything to be relatable to the everyday person that can’t spend $250 on shoes. I wanted to work with adidas to find ways to make sure the shoe was accessible to everybody who wants to wear them.”
The sneaker going with “Issue #1” is a nod to comic book releases, and the D.O.N. name stands for “Determination Over Negativity.”
The release doesn’t offer a ton of details about the sneaker’s construction, but you can see that it appears to featurea a knit upper with some extra cushioning on the ankle. It also appears to have an actual tongue separate from the upper, rather than the ever-popular bootie construction we see so often on basketball sneakers now.
The three-stripes branding is on the inside of the sneaker rather than the outside, and has the web look, fitting with the Spida motif. The midsole looks an awful lot like that of the Pro Bounce, and we’ll have to wait to find out what other technology is being brought in to the shoe’s construction.
Given Mitchell’s statement on accessibility, one would expect the price point on the D.O.N. Issue #1 to come in somewhere around the $100-$115 range ($115 is what the Dame 5s come in at).
