The Air Jordan 10 was released in 1994-95 despite Jordan’s absense from the NBA. The Air Jordan 10 featured a different shape than the previous Jordan shoes did.
Not everyone plays like Mike
Too bad for Mike (but good for all of his followers), baseball went on strike thus leaving Jordan hanging with nothing to do - that is if he didn’t return to the NBA. Sure enough, Jordan shocked everyone when he returned from retirement on March 19, 1995. Since his jersey had been retired, he had to go back onto the court wearing #45 until the technicalities were cleared out of the way.
Surprised Nike?
It seemed as if Nike wasn’t expecting to see Jordan back in the game so soon. Nike started to re-release older model’s of the Air Jordan series (Air Jordan 1, Air Jordan 2, Air Jordan 3) and the Air Jordan 10 soles featured an honor or an award from each year Michael had spent in the NBA.
Apart from these soles the design was no real surprise and was overall very plain. Hatfield picked up a few design elements from previous models and you could see some obvious signs of influence from the Air Jordan 3’s, the Air Jordan 5’s and the Air Jordan 6’s.Samplemania Continues
If the Air Jordan 9’s had a lot of different samples, the Air Jordan 10’s were even worse. There were a lot of different team colors that were produced in limited quantities and there were samples with numbers for a lot of different players in the NBA. As Michael wore number 45 when he returned there were also samples with #45 stitched on the shoes.
FINALLY RETROS!
About every Jordan 10 fan was pulling their hair out by the time that Nike released retro Jordan 10’s. May 3, 2005 was the launch date which was about 10 years after they were last sold. The Jordan 10’s were the oldest shoes to be retroed older than the Air Jordan 13’s.