The Oregon Ducks basketball teams receive four unique Kobe 8 Protro colorways from Nike.
Four player-exclusive colorways of the Nike Kobe 8 Protro have been released for the men’s and women’s basketball teams at the University of Oregon.
Despite the fact that Duke and Kentucky are two college basketball teams that have received exclusive Kobe shoe hues, the Oregon Ducks are particularly fortunate due to their longstanding relationship with Nike. The LeBron 21 has also been released in a number of Ducks colorways, while Kevin Durant wore an Oregon PE for his KD 15 in December. With treatments in green and yellow, black, green, and yellow, and white, green, and yellow, the four Kobe 8 Protro variations play up to Oregon’s color scheme. The tongue of the first three has the school’s “O” emblem, while the third has an exaggerated Ducks mascot.
The most noticeable modification to the 2012 iteration of the Nike Kobe 8 Protro is the addition of React foam in place of the Lunarlon midsole. One of the more well-known styles in the Nike Kobe collection, the all-white “Halo” version of the shoe was unveiled in August of last year to mark the start of the company’s new collaboration with Kobe Bryant’s estate.
As is practically always the case with Oregon Ducks footwear, it is unlikely that the Kobe 8 Protro colorways will be made available for general purchase.
Phil Knight, one of the company’s co-founders, ran track for the Oregon track team under the coaching of Bill Bowerman before starting Nike. Four years after Nike created the current “O” logo for the athletic programs in 1998, the institution as a whole embraced it. The Oregon football team is especially well-known for its affinity for Nike, as evidenced by the fact that it always plays in a brand-new outfit created by the Swoosh.
Knight gave $500 million, his second gift, to the university’s Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact in 2021. In 2016, Nike also contributed $13.5 to the restoration of Oregon’s track and field stadium.