Kobe's new low-top shoe.

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. Whether a low-top shoe will be accepted by consumers will depend on breaking down myths. In testing for the Kobe IV, Nike found that its wear testers broke down into three categories: those who would never wear a low, those who were skeptical but curious, and those who were on board the instant they were handed a pair.groupon    purchase