The Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard is set to debut her Jordan Tatum 4 PE tonight against the New York Liberty. Below are quotes from Howard about the inspiration behind the shoe, her creative process and more.
“Purple and blue and teal are three of my favorite colors. Purple for Lupus – If you’ve ever noticed in the month of May when we start the season, I only wear shoes that have purple in them or all purple shoes for Lupus. One of my best friends, she has that, and I always want to support her.”
“Blue and teal – teal is for Scleroderma and my grandmother passed of that when I was young. And blue – just for the fact that, my brother Terrance Clarke, I met him at Kentucky, it was one of his colors as well and I always like to represent him. He always is with me everywhere I go, every accomplishment I have.”
“It says, ‘Find A Way,’ and it’s just like, find a way to protect yourself, find a way to protect your peace, find a way to get back to your happiness and what you enjoy doing. And just making sure that you’re in a calm mindset and a calm place and being able to not let anybody steal your joy. I think that’s big on having a good life and protecting yourself and making sure that you’re in charge of everything that comes in and goes out.”
“We have a great design team at Jordan. They always bring my ideas to life. This isn’t my first PE, but I always play a huge huge part in it and they always take my recommendations, my ideas and they do exactly what I ask them to do… For me to be as creative as I am, and being able to have a team like Jordan behind me, they always do a super great job. They usually don’t have too much input and allow my creativity to show. Because this is a PE, this is a Player Exclusive, something that I’m designing for myself, designing for everybody to see a little bit more of how I am as a person and my personality. This is probably one of the only times they ever take a step back and let the player just do whatever they want. It’s hard with a shoe because sometimes they can’t put certain things on it, but I’ve always had great success in what I’ve wanted and what I’ve seen come to life.”