Did Travis Scott really steal Dennis Rodman’s shoes?
Dennis Rodman is a former NBA player who has really taken a backseat recently. Unlike other basketball legends like Shaquille O’Neal, Rodman hasn’t really been present on TV screens, giving his commentary on major sports networks. But it’s not surprising, given his cultivated bad-boy image.
The former Detroit Pistons player may just be seen as an iconic basketball player from a bygone era. However, he also made business moves during his day, and one such move was a quasi-brand deal with Nike before the brand held the cultural power it has today.
In 1994, the sportswear company released the Nike Air Darwin. However, the shoe was made vastly more popular than it would have initially been because it was Rodman’s go-to choice of footwear on the court. Rodman claimed the shoe as his own, and in 2018, decades after its discontinuation, the company did an exclusive re-release of the Nike Air Darwin alongside Dennis Rodman.
Despite not being designed by Rodman himself, the Nike Air Darwin shoe is associated with him so much as he wore them throughout 1994 in his season with the San Antonio Spurs. However, only a year after his 2018 re-release, Travis Scott collaborated with Nike and released his own shoe, which, to Dennis Rodman’s anger, boasted a backward swoosh.
The backward swoosh has been featured on many shoes but was first seen on the Nike Air Darwin sneaker. As such, shortly after Travis Scott released his AJ1 Retro High OG sneakers, Rodman accused the Astroworld creator of copying his sneaker design.
As a result, he called Scott out in a video, stating, “Travis Scott has copied my shoe. I was the first guy to do mines backwards when I was playing with the Chicago Bulls. Come on, Travis, give me some credit, you know. You copied my sh*t. You copied my sh*t, all right. So this ain’t new; this ain’t new, brother. Either way, congratulations.”
Did Travis Scott steal Dennis Rodman’s shoe?
No, Travis Scott didn’t steal Dennis Rodman’s shoe. Rodman did not design the first sneaker with a backward swoosh, nor was he involved in any official brand deal with Nike at the time. The Nike Air Darwin was designed by the legendary sneaker architect Tinker Hatfield.
Since the release of Darwin in 1994, there have been many backward swooshes. The icon appears on the Nike Air Flare, the Nike Air Yoke and many other models. Dennis Rodman may have popularised the Darwin specifically. Still, no evidence suggests that he made the backward swoosh popular.
The Dennis Rodman re-release of the Nike Air Darwins in 2018 was an addition to a long list of sneakers branding that symbol. In reality, Travis Scott’s 2019 AJ1 Retro High OG sneakers look nothing like the sneakers Rodman popularised. After three decades of models, the direction of the swoosh is trivial.
Travis Scott never responded to the former NBA player, as it was less than a year since the Astroword tragedy, and he most definitely was dealing with bigger things than a petty comment about his sneakers.