How Adidas Designers Embraced the Hate Around the Crazy Explosive

What you need to know about adidas' polarizing basketball sneaker.

Jul 25, 2016
Images via adidas
Images via adidas

Can an early leak make or break a sneaker before it even releases?

The question, which may be impossible to definitively answer, is one that plagued designers at adidas before officially unveiling the Crazy Explosive, a completely new franchise for basketball that launches next month. The first images of the radical sneaker hit the internet earlier this summer, which led it to be the butt of several jokes and memes on social media.

“When it leaked and when people started putting it on Twitter and going after it, it’s not the way you expect to launch something brand new,” said Jesse Rademacher, adidas Basketball’s design director. The Crazy Explosive is the first project for the brand under his direction. “At the same time, it completely changed the conversation. It made people notice that we were doing something different whether they liked it or not.”

The original brief for the project was to create something totally new in basketball, with design working around the playing style of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ human pogo stick, Andrew Wiggins. This upcoming season, the shoe will also be worn by the likes of Harrison Barnes, Iman Shumpert, Marcus Smart, and Justice Winslow.

Aesthetics aside, there are several technological firsts found in the Crazy Explosive. Here, Rademacher gives us a full breakdown.

The goal of the design was to create something that was completely polarizing.

“It’s the first shoe where we really took this whole new approach and challenged every aspect of the design,” Rademacher said, adding that the Crazy Explosive is the beginning of a new series of basketball sneakers for adidas. “What you get is hopefully something that feels completely different—that was the entire goal.”

Designers took Twitter jokes about the leaked images of the shoe with a grain of salt, but...

“I don’t pay attention too much to social media because people are gonna say what they’re gonna say and haters are going to be haters no matter what,” Rademacher said of the project, which was his first for adidas Basketball. “But, I mean, you’re a human. You’re birthing things out into the world so you never know how people are going to accept it and that’s part of this project, to have the courage almost to do something that you knew wasn’t really meant for everybody.”

The Crazy Explosive has more Boost cushioning than any other adidas basketball shoe.

Although it's somewhat hidden, the Crazy Explosive features a full-length Boost sole. This is the first time adidas put full-length Boost in a mid-cut shoe. “From the thickness and how we utilized it, we just jam-packed as much Boost in there as possible all the way from the clear outsole to the back. It’s definitely a new approach and a new use of Boost in basketball,” Rademacher said.

The traction pattern on the outsole is the first of its kind.

The multi-directional traction pattern is designed for enhanced grip and stability on the hardwood. To further enhance stability, the sneaker has a full-length infinity-shaped torsion plate to help fine-tune the Boost cushioning.

An NBA rookie’s first reaction to the Crazy Explosive validated the design team’s risk.

The sneaker may have gotten its fair share of slander from internet trolls, but Celtics draft pick and adidas signee Jaylen Brown’s comments upon seeing the sneaker for the first time gave Rademacher confidence that he was on the right track. “Jaylen Brown’s first reaction was ‘Man, that thing looks like it’s from the future,’” the designer said. “That was kind of the emotion that we wanted to get to and really resonate.”

The biggest challenge was convincing execs that this was a right direction for the brand to go in basketball.

Designers not only faced criticism from social media, but from inside the company as well. Rademacher says: “It was our leaders from the top of the brand that set out to create this new thing, but you can’t do that overnight. There’s always going to be some resistance internally. Overcoming the hurdles as you go, getting people to co-sign and agree that this is a good direction—that was probably the biggest internal challenge before we get to all the stuff that you guys get to see.”

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