NIKE LeBron's shoe to go on shelves

Some stores will open just after midnight.
BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) -- In his school, LeBron James wore the signature shoe of his idol, Michael Jordan.
Now fans can wear James' shoe.
Nike launches the product endorsed by the Cleveland Cavaliers rookie Saturday, and store managers nationwide are expecting teenagers to sleep outside -- just as they did for debuts of the Air Jordan line.
James' shoe launches in 2,225 stores nationwide, starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when New York City's Foot Action opens its doors.
"You could call it the Harry Potter of sneakers," said Jamelah Leddy, a sportswear analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen Inc. in Seattle.
Hot item
The hype has spilled from TV talk shows into Web sites, including eBay, where 54 of the embargoed $110 pairs are selling with bids approaching $200. In November, when Portland's Niketown offered a limited edition of the shoe, the sneaker sold in 18 minutes, leaving a line of teens still waiting outside.
What's the appeal? "Obviously, it's LeBron," 15-year-old Peter Koehler explained. "People will buy Jordan even if they don't like the way it looks -- because it's Jordan."
It's an insight clear to those who labor behind the locked doors of Nike's "Innovation Kitchen" in Portland. In a room stuffed with easels, designers struggled to graft James' appeal onto a sneaker.
"This is a watershed project," said Tinker Hatfield, Nike's chief designer, who created the Air Jordan prototype two decades ago. "We're taking everything we learned and applying it."
Under Hatfield's direction, each Air Jordan prototype shoe mirrored a different aspect of his personality. The panther he loved, the fighter jet he admired, even his Ferrari -- all became design elements, translated into color schemes and lines.
First launched in 1984, Air Jordans became so popular that by 1998, Nike agreed to move launch dates to Saturdays so students wouldn't skip school to line up at stores.
Design based on personality
When James signed a reported $90 million endorsement deal with Nike, it ended a bidding war that included Adidas and Reebok.
But Nike wasn't waiting for the deal to be signed to try to figure out how James' personality could be sewn into a shoe. At the time, James was driving a $50,000 Hummer, which he said was a birthday gift from his mother.
"The original Hummer is pure utilitarianism. Pure function. No luxury -- like his game," said 35-year-old Eric Avar, one of the two other designers.
The designers made more than 100 sketches, producing a design in which the Hummer appears as the metaphor throughout -- from the metallic lace holes, which mirror the shape of the vehicle's wheel, to the chevron sole, a reference to the Hummer's tire tread.