Sneaker Sketch of the Week // Mark Smith's Jordan Fly Wade 3 Concept

The Fly Wade 3 never actually released, so obviously we took notice when one of the shoe's sketches was featured in a sneaker museum.

words // Nick DePaula

images // Zac Dubasik

So, bare with me. It's not a cleanly scanned sketch, or even a fully unobstructed sketch, but what you are looking at here is an early version of what would've been the Jordan Fly Wade 3, designed by Mark Smith.

Yes, you remembered right -- that would be the shoe that never came out, since Dwyane Wade opted to leave Jordan Brand at the start of the 2012 NBA season for Chinese athletic brand Li-Ning.

While his first two Fly Wade signature models with Jordan Brand weren't exactly groundbreaking by any definition, I do remember being pretty impressed with the early direction of the Fly Wade 3 samples I saw during the summer of 2012. There was a cool mix of bonded leathers and nubucks, during a time when the entire industry shifted towards all synthetics. The shoe also had a huge forefoot podular Zoom bag, somewhat close to what we'd eventually see in the XX8 later in the season. It wasn't going to take anyone to a new place in terms of design or be a fraction as iconic as Michael's third signature, but it was a sleek and smooth shoe that I could easily envision DWade playing in.

At the time during that spring and summer, even though the shoe was still being worked on, nearly everyone at Jordan Brand was under the impression that Wade would be moving on from the brand when his endorsement deal expired on October 1st of 2012. So the Fly Wade 3 was scrapped mid-way in, and never made it all the way through the normal development and execution process like all other in-line products.

While the shoe hasn't been seen in final form otherwise, our own Zac Dubasik spotted the sketch curiously plastered along a wall at the Bata Shoe Museum's Sneaker Culture exhibit in Toronto. It's hard to explain exactly why this sketch is featured, but it's still cool to look at nonetheless.