Jay-Z announces 2012 NBA Brooklyn Nets

Rapper, entrepreneur and partial owner of the Nets basketball team, Jay-Z, announced some exciting news for the sports world. The formally known New Jersey Nets will officially be changed to the Brooklyn Nets for the 2012 season. In addition to the name change, the Nets will have a new colorway that has yet to be debuted. In celebration of the recent transition, the new Barclay Center will kick off its opening later next year with a special concert series featuring Jay-Z and friends. What are your thoughts on this name change?

Nike offers up Marty McFly's 'Back to the Future' shoes

The mythical Nike MAG – the futuristic, light-up, athletic shoe from 2015 that has captured the fascination of sneakerheads and movie fans ever since Marty McFly donned a pair in “Back to the Future Part II” in 1989 — is finally a reality.

The footwear, which was unveiled by Nike in Los Angeles Thursday, comes with a couple of caveats. First, they lack the self-lacing mechanism depicted in the film. Second, there are only 1,500 pairs in existence. Third, they can only be bought via auction through E-Bay.

But the good news is that the auction of the shoes will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation to fund Parkinson’s disease research. That will amount to no small chunk of change given that a small ceramic replica in a box signed by Nike’s vice president of innovation, design and special projects, brought in $3,500, and a pair of the Nike MAGs packaged in a bright yellow packing case (which will be personally signed by Michael J. Fox -- Marty McFly himself) fetched $37,500 in just eight minutes of frenzied bidding at a live auction Thursday night at the Montalban Theater in Hollywood.

The centerpiece of that event — which included appearances by actor Christopher “Doc Brown” Lloyd and Tinker Hatfield (who designed the shoes that appeared in the original film)- – was the reveal of the shoes themselves in all their glowing LED and electroluminescent glory.

The shoes were designed to be precise replicas of the film version, right down to the contour of the gray fabric upper, the speckled Zolatone sole and glowing Nike logo strap. The astonishingly light 2011 Nike MAG (the name refers to “magnetic levitation”) is the company’s first rechargeable shoe, and can glow for five hours between charges.

While technology hasn’t advanced far enough to satisfy the most hard-core movie fans and sneakerheads who’ve long hoped for the self-lacing feature depicted in the movie, Hatfield dangled a shoelace of hope.

“We’ve got some prototypes that work but they’re not ready for prime time yet,” he said during an interview earlier in the day.

So, if a self-lacing version is in the works, why release a non-lacing version now? Nike’s chief executive Mark Parker and the Michael J. Fox Foundation co-founder and Executive Vice President Debi Brooks both point to the opportunity to leverage the enthusiasm for the Nike MAG in hopes of doubling the amount of money raised.

“Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki have pledged a matching grant of up to $50 million to the Michael J. Fox Foundation through the end of 2012,” Brooks said. “That’s the kind of thing that can really help us envision a future without Parkinson’s.”

Each day, for 10 days (starting Sept. 8) 150 pairs of the 2011 Nike MAG shoes will be put up for auction at nikemag.ebay.com. Bids for the first round of shoes ranged from $4,000 to $8,100 in the first few hours after the announcement.

--Adam Tschorn
LA Times