Media MonsterNBA

Take Heart: Those LeBron Sneakers Everyone’s Talking About Today Don’t Necessarily Cost $315

While they’ve been known about for a while (LeBron first wore them for Team USA’s gold medal game win over Spain at the Olympics), Nike’s latest LeBron James sneaker model, the LeBron X (pictured above), is the talk of the sports/sneakerhead internet today. The main reasons why: for one thing, check the photo above this paragraph again. It’s a bold-looking shoe. The red, white, and blue colorway (again, Olympics, so that makes sense). The gold swoosh (which might be a limited-edition touch, since the ones LeBron himself already wore didn’t even have that).

But the biggest reason these shoes are causing such an uproar: the price. That price, at least the price anyone is paying attention to: $315. The initial version of the LeBron 9, Nike’s last LeBron sneaker, by comparison, cost $170. Why the almost-comical 85 percent increase? It’s in the details. The $315 figure is accurate – for a specific version of the shoe. That version: the Nike Plus edition, which features built-in technology that can track, according to Ball Don’t Lie:

…[S]tuff like how much/how far/how fast a player moves during a game or workout, or how high he/she jumped on a dunk.

Now, if you bought just the plain ol’ LeBron Xs without the fancy tracking technology, those would run you the still-steep-but-cheap-sounding-by-comparison $180. That represents a $10 increase over last year’s model (Nike pins the price increase on rising costs of shipping, materials such as cotton, and labor, especially in China), which according to the graphic here is much more in line with previous LeBron sneaker price increases from year to year. You’re going to have to pay an exorbitant cost to get your hands on LeBron Xs either way, but at least there are different degrees of price excess.

While the $315 figure isn’t what you’ll have to pay, though, let’s not ignore that this all still means there is a pair of sneakers out there that costs 315 damn dollars. You might dig the look. We’re sure the technology is cool. But even the specialty edition of the LeBron 9s Nike rolled out earlier this year were $250. That’s a 26 percent increase in specialty shoe prices. Nike would probably explain that change by citing the Nike+ technology, but man – $65 worth? Not that Nike probably minds all this focus on the special edition: if no one knows about the $180 standard model, they’ll all just plunk down $315 instead.