The LeBron Air Max 8 PS: Testing The King’s New Shoes In Miami

Pictured above are LeBron James’ new NBA Playoffs shoes from Nike, which I was lucky enough to test this past weekend in Miami. Nike invited a handful of writers down to American Airlines Arena for the outing, and then let us all play pickup in their newest release to see how liked them.

Some thoughts are after the jump.

You can probably imagine the awkwardness that ensues when a bunch of out-of-shape basketball writers lace ‘em up and take to a basketball court that’s otherwised reserved for the best athletes in the world. Exhibit A: The stretching exercise we’re doing above.

It was like blogger fantasy camp, and keeping with the fantasy, we had none other than Kenny Anderson (aka Mr. Chibbs, aka random extra in Treme) there to coach us. The stretching above eventually gave way to our epically terrible renditions of the three-man weave (which left Kenny pretty disgusted, completely without sarcasm), then some extremely confusing shooting drills that Kenny designed himself, and finally, some pickup hoops where we tested two different versions of the LeBrons.

(Stating the obvious: This was totally awesome, and completely undeserved.)

The first pair we had were the regular season versions and the second were the playoff versions. And without pretending to be some sort of shoe expert, I’ll only say that the transformation his designer talked about was very real; the playoff shoes are lighter, just as comfortable, and just as sturdy.

It’s hard to imagine shoes make that much of a difference for LeBron one way or another, but if you’re anywhere as slow as me, every little bit helps. Going from the first pair to the second was like switching from a heavy bat in the on-deck circle to the real thing at home plate. So...

[/puts on columnist hat]

Does this mean LeBron’s ready to swing for the fences in the 2011 postseason?

[/takes off columnist hat]

Ehh... Maybe? Who can say.

But I can say this: he’s working with some pretty awesome shoes, so he’s got that for him!