We’re not a professional basketball player, but throughout the month of February we pretended to train like one. Once a week, except for a respite in the days before All-Star, we dragged our beaten body out of bed at an ungodly hour to take part in Nike’s Zoom City training.
Nike really outdid themselves with this opportunity for media to briefly experience getting trained like a pro. Dime and an assorted group of media members were invited to 8 a.m. training sessions each week, and they pulled out all the stops for the honor. They provided us car service to and from the sessions, and after training we got to eat incredible meals cooked up by Chef Max. It’s the best food we’ve consumed before noon. It became a real treat after such exhaustive sessions, so we want to thank Chef Max for his weekly offerings.
The sessions themselves gave media members a chance to train like NBA stars do, while also trying out the latest in their performance footwear offerings, specifically the Zoom City variety.
WEEK 1
The opening week coincided with the Nike Kobe X unveiling. So they provided us with his powder blue “5 AM” bad a** colorway.
In conjunction with the sneakers, we had to undergo a training session with Tim Grover — the mastermind behind Chicago’s late 80’s iteration of “The Breakfast Club” (MJ, Scottie, and Horace Grant), Kobe’s insane 5 AM workouts, and Dwyane Wade’s perpetual drive to stay on the court.
We’ve trained with Grover before, for the Kobe 9 Elite unveiling, so we were familiar with his somewhat-stunted gait after so many surgeries (seriously, Tim’s gone under the knife more than Brandon Roy, and it’s a testament to his physical fitness he can even get up and down a court). In fact, at the end of our training session, right before we were about to play in the actual games, we rolled our ankle.
Thankfully, we asked Grover if we could Mamba the injury and keep playing. He jolted our foot 360 degrees, and — while wincing — we said we could go (this injury nagged us throughout the whole month, but we weren’t gonna wuss-out in front of our peers). We’re a fan of the Kobe X, and we’re not sure if we had been were wearing the super high silhouette of his ninth signature we could have bounced back so well.
Thanks to getting teamed up with a cast of superior players, we left the opening week 2-0, despite an ankle that looked like it had a golf ball had been logged under the skin.
WEEK 2
We couldn’t make this session, which is a shame because we missed Nike’s LED court at the Zoom City Arena. The court was put together specifically to house All-Star festivities, and they pulled out all the stops. Players —media members, entertainers, and more than few semi-professional wringers — underwent BAM-testing to create six even squads for the next day’s tournament.
Common was in the house, which pisses us off because “I Used To Love H.E.R.” is perhaps the greatest hip hop song ever done (it would have been nice to chat with him). Other celebs in attendance for this special week of training: Stalley, Eddie Huang, Ansel Elgort and more.
Teams were ascribed certain players, whose footwear they wore. So there was a James Harden team, a Kevin Durant team, an Anthony Davis team et al. (Frankly, we’re glossing over how awesome this was because we couldn’t make it).
Some of the kicks the lucky media members got to rock, included the Nike Zoom Hypercross Trainer, the Nike Hyperchase and more.
WEEK 3
The week following the 2015 All-Star Game we were back in action, this time wearing the Hyperposite 2 — the kick of choice for Anthony Davis before he inevitably gets his own signature line.
Training us in week 3 was Jerry Powell of Basketball Results. Jerry largely took it easy on the poor media members still sleep-deprived from All-Star festivities (woe is us). He focused more on foot work before the shot, and explosive dribble moves before accelerating past an imaginary defender. We spent more time with a basketball, constantly dribbling between sessions, per his instructions. It was a smart change of pace from Grover in week 1,and our final trainer the next week.
We again went 2-0, but primarily because Bleacher Report’s Lance Fresh hit a game-tying three-pointer as the buzzer expired and we prevailed in OT for our second win.
WEEK 4
A hyper vigilant Idan Ravin ran the final week’s training session, but we missed a large portion stuck in traffic. Then again, we’ve trained with Ravin and Carmelo Anthony before, and that one almost made us puke.
Talking to our fellow Zoom City training peers and performing the final few segments, the entire final training session was about wearing us down — forcing everyone to suck more wind than they had the preceding month. There were a lot of non-basketball drills, isolating specific muscles that have to be strengthened if you’re gonna play an 82-game regular season. We aren’t, but we only got a snippet of what the stars do. Even missing a lot of this training session, we could barely move the next day.
His intense workouts created a fine gloss on everyone playing and this was before we even tipped off for the final games.
A special bonus feature of the final week, after we brought our favorite pair of Nike sneakers to train in, was the chance to try out the Kobe X Elite. Thie sneaker wouldn’t even be teased by Nike until the next month.
We lost both our games on the final day, which makes sense, since we weren’t teamed with anyone who could carry us past our opponents.
***
If you think you know the amount of effort and drive it requires to not only get to the highest level of basketball in the world, but to stay there, you have no idea. Getting put through the paces with some of the top NBA-level trainers would change whatever preconceived notions anyone might have had in the past about the conditioning of a specific player. Even the barest of samples, like the final week with Ravin, had us in pain with achy muscle for the entire following week.
If you think those same NBA players who bust their ass so hard to get to the big time are gonna rock shoddy footwear, think again.
Special thanks go out to the good people at Nike, specifically Brian Strong and Heter Myers, who helped put the whole thing together and kept it cracking during the training sessions.
Check out the kicks on the next page…
Here are some of the sneakers participants got to wear during the training sessions.
