D’ya hear that midnight squeak? It’s no ghoul creaking up the stairs – it’s Ja Morant’s stealthy hardwood traction, and Nike are ready to unleash the beast. The Swoosh have bottled defenders’ bad dreams in the follow-up to one of last year’s biggest performance pairs, debuting the Ja 4 earlier this month. Now Morant’s signature silhouette is creeping in with the second of its five reported colourways: ‘Dark Mode’.
While the Ja 3 took no prisoners in its immediate onslaught of eye-shredding palettes, Nike and Morant seem to be stepping a little more covertly with the Ja 4’s rollout… but only a little. The shoe’s debut ‘Nightmare’ colourway was a multi-coloured marvel, which illuminated the freshly angled ‘JA’ logo on the lateral in a reflective, colour-shifting metallic. By contrast, 'Dark Mode’ goes with a blacked-out build and subtle ‘Cobalt Bliss’ hits to the tongue branding and under the arch of the lateral’s ‘A’. The Swoosh-incorporating ‘JA’ logo arrives in a sophisticated flash of metallic silver, which appears to shift to black from certain perspectives.
As for the Ja 4’s specs, there’s one pretty integral upgrade from the line’s previous edition. On the Ja 3, the ‘JA’ branding was a clever riff rooted in aesthetics – but it’s now morphed into a critical part of the shoe’s build, called the ‘JA-Frame’. It’s essentially a thermoplastic polyurethane structure which provides next-level stability, giving fully contained lockdown during rapid movements and explosive cuts.
The Nike Ja 4 ‘Dark Mode’ arrives on September 4 via Nike’s online channels.
Looking for more on performance hoops heat? Check out everything we know about adidas’ AE 3 rollout.
