Nike Basketball & Kobe Bryant — The Hyperdunk Moment
In 2008, Nike Basketball needed a flagship moment.
Not retro nostalgia. Something new.
So we launched the Hyperdunk—the shoe Nike positioned as the future of basketball performance, built around new tech and timed to the Beijing Olympic Games.
Then we dropped the film.
Kobe. A speeding Aston Martin. One clean leap.
And a question the internet couldn’t stop arguing about: real or fake?
It didn’t just get views—it became a reference point.
SportsCenter ran it for free. Blogs broke it down frame-by-frame.
And Inside the NBA spoofed it on TNT with Kenny Smith trying (and failing) to pull it off.
Kobe even leaned into the joke and did a “sequel” with the cast of MTV’s hit show, Jackass—jumping over a pool of snakes.
The result was rare: a product launch that crossed over into culture.
ESPN later ranked the Hyperdunk among the top sneakers in NBA history, noting how Kobe—and most of the 2008 USA team—made it a must-have at the Olympics.
And Kobe was at the height of his reach in that era—an international force, with the NBA noting he led jersey sales across major markets (including China) around that period.
Looking back, the Hyperdunk wasn’t just a shoe.
It was a moment when Nike Basketball felt like it was inventing the future in public—and the world actually paid attention.