SOLE: Sneakers Shoes

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Key Tech: Air-Sole unit (heel), encapsulated Air-Sole unit (forefoot)

Use: Hoops, Indoor

Position: Guard/Forward

Colorway Tested: Black/Metallic Silver

Price: $135 for all Retro releases (the O.G. retailed for $125)

Pros: Very good fit with generally good comfort; very good support over and alongside the midfoot; good impact protection with very good court feel and surprisingly good cushioning response; lots of support around the ankle; very good traction; design is as fresh today as it was back in 1990

Cons: Though an improvement over the III and IV, the midsole is still a bit too thin under the ball of the foot for the bigger ballers of today; broad, flat base still imparts a bit of a blocky feel at the heel; hard points along the top edges of the tongue can cause some discomfort along the sides of the ankle; clear portions of outsole yellow with wear

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MY JOURNEY STARTS HERE

BACK IN 1990 I WASN’T THE HUGE HOOPS FANATIC that I am now and had only a vague notion of who this Michael Jordan guy was, but the fifth iteration of his shoe captivated me like none before and few since. It’s the first shoe I knew I needed to have the second I laid eyes on. Unfortunately, my empty wallet told another story. But I went back to the old “Odd Lot” store on Main St. in the aptly named Flushing, Queens on the regular anyway, just to stare.

Finally, after a summer’s worth of mowing, a fall’s worth of raking and part of a winter’s worth of shoveling, I had saved up enough to buy that bad ass shoe that called me like a siren to a rocky shore (even today $125 is a lot of money for a kid to spend on shoes; back then it was a fortune). By that time, the only colorway left in my size was White/Grape Ice-New Emerald and, though it wasn’t my first choice (what I really wanted was the White/Black-Fire Red colorway, but that had long sold out), I was glad to have it.

You’d think that after all that longing and all that saving, finally owning the shoe would have been anticlimactic, but the Air Jordan V’s grip on my imagination only strengthened with proximity. After every wearing (back in those days folks actually wore their shoes) I’d inspect each shoe, poring over every seam and crevice so I could wipe away any visible debris with my trusty old (not the same one I used to brush my teeth, of course). Over the course of a few years I wore those sweet Vs into the ground, and I’ve been a shoehead ever since.

Cut to December 2004 and my first time playing in the Air Jordan V since the other George Bush was President. This might sound strange given that I’ve just waxed poetic about how much I loved the Air Jordan V back in the day, but I actually wasn’t looking forward to wearing it again. You see, I was afraid that all of my fond memories of the shoe would be shattered within that coldest of crucibles: time. Here’s a geeked out illustration of my meaning from the TV section of my rapidly deteriorating memory banks: I recently bought a DVD box set of Robotech, an animated series imported from Japan that saw a brief run on local networks back in the mid-80s. Man, when I was a kid I flipped for that show, so I was pumped to watch all 900-minutes of it-straight through and with no commercials. But before I made it even halfway through the first of six discs I was hit by a cold, hard fact: it sucked. I don’t mean that it was bad, I mean that it was god-awful. I seriously would have rather watched a Days of Our Lives marathon than the drivel that was Robotech. So, “poof,” just like that, one of the pleasant memories that imbued my youthful recollections with a cheery, rose-colored hue vanished in a puff of dull, grey smoke.

Would the same happen with the Air Jordan V? Would a shoe I venerated as a kid be exposed as a no talent fraud that only won my affections by preying on my naïveté as an impressionable, unsophisticated youth? Okay, so maybe I was getting a little carried away with all this, but, hey, that’s what us shoeheads do, right?

Well, once I finally hit the court in the Air Jordan V, I was relieved to find that my existential angst was all for naught. No, the V can’t match the performance of today’s best hoops shoes, but it’s still-15 years after its original release-as good as I remembered and well above average.

Like the IV before it, the Air Jordan V improves incrementally on the cushioning provided by its predecessor. Its midsole feels a bit thicker (though still not quite substantial enough under the forefoot by modern standards) and more responsive, with that responsiveness in evidence pretty much right out of the box. This softer out-of-box feel provided by the V’s midsole marked a nice change from the rock-hard start-up characteristic of all prior Jordans.

Where the V takes a big step away from its predecessor is in its cut, which is substantially higher than the IV’s and very nearly in hightop territory. In fact, the inner, or medial, side of the V’s ankle collar extends above the big bone on the medial side of the ankle (aka the medial malleolus), which is what defines a hightop as a hightop. What qualifies the V as a mid in spite of this is that the outer, or lateral, side of its ankle collar dips almost an inch-and-a-half lower, placing it alongside, but definitely not over the big bone on the lateral side of the ankle (called, appropriately enough, the lateral malleolus).

The V is the first Jordan and, to the best of my knowledge, the first hoops shoe to employ this sort of an asymmetrical design around the ankle (for more background on asymmetrical ankle collars, see my review of the Air Jordan XIV on page 152). Given the resulting combination of top-notch support without an overly restrictive feel, it’s curious to me that this hasn’t become a more common feature in hoops shoe design.

That said, the one comfort issue I encountered while testing the Air Jordan V was centered on my ankle, though it was not due to the shoe’s asymmetrical ankle collar. Instead, it involved its tongue, which has a unique, almost crown-like shape. The angular edges along the corners of the tongue form hard points that, depending on their position, could rub against the front of my ankle. Sometimes I didn’t feel them at all, but at other times the hard points made the shoe quite uncomfortable. As with the lace pressure issue that I experienced while testing the IV, this problem could probably be mitigated and possibly eliminated by wearing thickly padded socks or calf-high socks folded over to provide extra padding around the ankle.

The bottom line on the Air Jordan V is that it’s no longer at the top of the performance heap, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready to be put out to pasture just quite yet. It still has plenty to offer on court and, off of it, I’m amazed at how well its form has withstood the test of time. I mean, the circa 1990 Air Jordan V looks more fresh and modern today than just about anything else on offer at your local shoe store-a clear testament to the innovativeness and fundamental integrity of its design. So, 20 years on, I guess I’d say I feel a measure of vindication for my adulation of the shoe back in the days of my carefree youth. My re-acquaintance with the Air Jordan V has proved to me that, even when viewed through more cynical, world-weary eyes, my exuberance for the shoe, though perhaps irrational, was most definitely not misplaced.

—From Issue 7, article by Professor K