The Nike Shox BB4 OG returns August 28 in its "Black/Lapis" colorway (style code IR1984-010) for $190, the shoe's first retro since 2019. It's the model Vince Carter wore when he dunked over 7-foot-2 French center Frédéric Weis at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The 2000 original
Designer Eric Avar built the Shox BB4 in 2000 around Nike's new Shox cushioning platform — four exposed polyurethane columns at the heel, engineered to compress and rebound like springs, with a design language borrowed from space suits and rocket boosters. Carter debuted the shoe that September at the Sydney Olympics. Days into the tournament, playing Team USA against France, he stole a pass, drove the lane, and jumped clean over Weis to slam it home. The play is still known simply as the Dunk of Death, and Carter has said he didn't realize he'd cleared Weis entirely until teammates told him after the final buzzer.
The 2026 retro
The August 28 pair keeps the original spec intact: black leather across the toe, tongue and eyestays, metallic silver covering most of the side panels and heel, and the four exposed Shox columns finished in a deep lapis blue at the heel — a nod to Carter's Toronto Raptors years, whose team colors were navy, red and silver. Vertical stitching on the side panels shifts to a horizontal pattern at the heel, and the dotted graphic detailing from the 2000 original carries over unchanged. It releases in unisex sizing through Nike.com and select Nike Sportswear retailers.
This is the BB4's first trip back to shelves since a 2019 retro, and it follows a run of Shox BB4 releases built specifically around Carter's legacy — Nike gifted him a two-pair Shox BB4 package, including a metallic-gold pair with purple cushioning referencing the Raptors' 1990s jerseys, to mark his 2024 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame induction. Carter had been pushing for a general retail retro before that: "I had asked [Nike] to bring them back a couple of years ago and I guess they just weren't ready to for whatever reason," he told Nice Kicks.
The BB4's return continues Nike's wider Shox revival and sits alongside a run of OG-spec heritage returns across the brand's basketball archive this year, including the Air Bakin OG "Varsity Red" and the Air Jordan 7 "Miro," which came back after an 18-year gap.
That run continues a week earlier with the Air More Uptempo '96 OG "Black/White," back August 21 for $170.
Source: Sneaker Bar Detroit, Sole Retriever
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