Longhorn Football Reveals Nike KD12 Texas

It’s almost a given at this point for the University of Texas football team that a new season means gifts from one of the school’s most celebrated Lifetime Longhorns; Kevin Durant. While KD only attended UT for one year, he has not been shy about expressing his love for the school in a variety of ways, such as his wallet and his on-court footwear choices. More importantly for sneakerheads, this relationship has lead to Texas Longhorn specific colorways in each of Durant’s first eleven signature shoes. Given the consistency the UT KD series has shown, it came as no surprise when Texas Football revealed images of the KD12 “Texas” via social media just days before the season opener against Louisiana Tech.

Fresh kicks. Nike Zoom KD12. 🤘#ThisIsTexas #HookEm pic.twitter.com/UcvVUQO1F3

— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) August 28, 2019

This year’s Texas KD features a blazing burnt orange upper with white accents, deviating significantly from the predominantly black UT KD10 and KD11 issued to the football team during the 2017 and 2018 campaigns. A Longhorn logo adorns the lateral side of the heel clip on each shoe, a design element recently also seen on the trio of KD11 PEs that were worn by the UT basketball teams last year. Despite being fairly plain for a Longhorns colorway, University of Texas fans will likely be clamoring to get their hands on a pair, largely due to Nike’s apparent incompetency when it comes to producing simple burnt orange and white shoes with UT branding.

With Durant’s twelfth signature sneaker, designer Leo Chang and the Swoosh looked create a balance of comfort and responsiveness by taking features that worked in other great basketball shoes and refining them to the nth degree. The KD12 features Quad Axial Flywire, providing the wearer with multi-directional containment and support. Additionally, a full-length articulated Nike Zoom Air bag is strobel stitched directly to the shoe’s upper, bringing the time-tested cushioning technology directly into contact with the foot for maximum responsiveness. An additional Zoom Air Bag stacked in the heel for extra impacting protection rounds out the Nike KD12s impressive tech specs, solidifying it as a performance beast among 2019s basketball sneaker releases.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of how these turned out. While I did enjoy that the KD10 and KD11 went for a different take on the Texas colorway, there is something about that burnt orange and white color combination that just works. Nike didn’t try to push the envelope with these because, quite frankly, they didn’t need to. Burnt orange is a color that is synonymous with the University of Texas at Austin, and seeing it alongside white accents and a bit of Longhorn branding will always make for a quintessential Texas sneaker.

As is the case with most of sneakers shown off by the Texas Football team on social media, there is currently no word on whether these will remain player exclusives or if they will release to the public. Nike hasn’t made a UT KD available for public purchase since the KD9 in 2017, so here’s to hoping that the Texas KD12s end that streak.

What do you think of the KD12 “Texas”? Will this be the year that Nike returns to giving the public a chance to own Longhorn KDs, or will they continue to remain exclusive to UT athletes?

Images by @utexasequipment