Kobe Basketball Shoes -nike.

Kobe's new low-top shoe The end result is a shoe that weighs just 11.6 ounces, some 20 percent lighter than the average Nike basketball shoe. For a player such as Bryant, who Nike says runs an average of 2.5 miles per game, less weight on his feet means more energy on the court and the ability to move quicker, run faster and perhaps even jump higher. He is expected to debut the shoes Dec. 19 against Miami. That night, Bryant won't be the first current NBA player to wear a low. Washington forward Gilbert Arenas is a longtime proponent of the low-top, and Nike made a lower-type cut for Phoenix guard Steve Nash last year. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wore low-top shoes for much of his career, too. But Bryant is by far the biggest current star to take the plunge into the low-cut world. And he's doing so with his signature shoe. It's a gamble for him, a gamble for Nike and a gamble for the industry as a whole. When you have the absolute best player in the world saying lows are safe, lows are actually helping me become a better player, that's a wrap," said Steve Mulholland, founder and publisher of Sole Collector, one of the leading consumer sneaker magazines. "The rules as we used to know are about to change." But not everyone believes this is a good thing. In choosing a low, Bryant will be swimming upstream against the long-held belief that a high-top protects the ankle and keeps it from rolling by providing extra support. Although a 1993 University of Oklahoma study that appeared in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found no relationship between shoe height and ankle injury, five years later a study in the Journal of Sport Sciences found that increased ankle support did reduce the likelihood of a sprained ankle.groupon    purchase