Reebok Is Back in Basketball: Engine A Shoe

Reebok back. That sentiment has been expressed before. But this time, there’s something more definitive to point to, a tangible moment. The brand has re-entered the performance basketball market for the first time since the 2010s. The shoe that the company’s hitching its fortunes to in hopes of bringing it to the promised land, and back to significance in basketball, is the Engine A.

The Engine A is a low-top basketball shoe debuted by Reebok athlete Angel Reese last year. It’s reminiscent of Reebok shoes from the early ‘90s, but it also has a current trend flare that draws from Y2K runners, with an upper using silver hits throughout.

Creating the Engine A was a choice made by Reebok to help the brand get back in the conversation, something it’s been lacking in recent decades.

“As Reebok continues to reclaim its stance in Sport, re-entering performance basketball was a huge priority for us. Basketball is at the forefront of culture—influencing the new school athlete and consumer across lifestyle, fashion, and music,” says Reebok CEO Todd Krinsky. “With a rich heritage on the court, we created the Engine A under Reebok Basketball’s new era to disrupt the game and create a positive impact. We’re focused on embracing the pros, up and comers, and rising stars alike who are unapologetically changing the sport on and off the court.”

The Engine A serves as a throughline across Reebok history. It has ERS cushioning, pulled from Reebok’s performance shoes in the late ‘80s, like the original Pump. It’s also inspired by shoes such as the Shaqnosis and Kamikaze. And it’s a shoe that poses the question, “What would a Reebok basketball shoe look like in 2025 if the brand never stopped making performance hoops shoes?”

The sneaker releases on Feb. 13 for $120 at Reebok.com. Ahead of that, we had the opportunity to talk to the shoe’s designer, Michael Hesterberg, to find out everything about the Engine A. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was it like making Reebok’s first performance basketball shoe in a long time?
It was like a dream come true in a lot of senses. I think a lot of people that are at Reebok really remember our basketball days fondly. Like, the consumers do. It’s just one of the things about Reebok that’s memorable, and there’s just a lot of passion and energy in the products we make, and the players that we worked with throughout the ’90s and the 2000s.

I was working in innovation, which is another passion area of mine, and Todd was like, “We’re going to try to reenter basketball, and we need to see what that would look like.”

In innovation, we typically work on technology platforms. So, “What are these ideas about performance, or whatever, look like across the brand through basketball, or training, or running?”

And so, I had some drawings for basketball shoes. And he saw those, and he was like, “This could be it.” And that spurred the process of where we ended up.

How much pressure was there to make sure that this was a good shoe? Because I feel like if Reebok comes back into basketball, and the shoe’s a dud, then it’s hard to move on. Right?
I hope that there’s permission and recovery from a failure. Like, I think that’s one thing about the ’90s that is so cool is there was just so much stuff, and people were trying things, and it inspired some, and other people were like, “That’s weird.” And I think, ideally, if it were up to me we would get back to that point. And for me, that’s something that Reebok needs to do. It needs to make you feel something. Like, it shouldn’t be just, like, warm toast, or something. You need to have an emotional response.

Speaking from that lens, there was a lot of pressure on it. Especially on the design side. Design shoulders the anxieties of the brand before something is real. The joy is going through the process of exploring what’s possible, and showing that to people, and gauging their responses, and that’s really fun. That’s probably the best part.

And I think I feel really good about where we ended, also not knowing where that point would be in some of the decisions we made, and questions we had about where we should reenter, and how that look should be. Like, should it be very past-focused? Like, should we be reissuing retros? Should we be calling back a lot on our previous DNA?

The question was, “Well, what would Reebok basketball look like if it had a continuous timeline?” Like, “If we never stopped making performance basketball shoes, where would we be?”

And that’s where we ended up, and the job was to create design language that accomplished that, which is a big ask. That’s the why ERS was the technology that we chose. It’s the first technology platform, like, the first innovation from the brand in 1989. I don’t know that people really necessarily remember those shoes. Todd does, and I think a few really Reebok insiders do, but it was a lot about capturing what is the collective aesthetic that evolved out of that first seed. And then would grow into the plant that became Engine A.

What is Engine A to you? Describe the shoe and the design behind it.
I was looking at ERS and I was like, “Well, is the right place to enter Reebok basketball the thing that people love about Reebok?” Just really high-quality shoes that are leather, that are really accessible and affordable. Like, is that the thing?

And so, the first sketches were really OG-feeling. And we took those things to Atlanta, and we were talking to a bunch of consumers and basketball players, both semi-pro, ex-pro, college, ex-college, pre-college, like, Overtime Elite kids, just showing them like, “Oh, what do you think about this?”

And it helped us capture how much time had passed since we were last in the basketball space. And none of them wanted leather stuff. So, just like, “Well, OK. Nobody cares about heritage really. They might enjoy the authenticity and the collective memory aspect, but they want something super contemporary.”

It also helped us zero in on low-cut. Every time I talk to Shaq, he’s like, “Do they really want low cuts?” And I’m like, “Yeah. Yeah. They really want low cuts. Like, everybody—unanimous.”

We put all these archival images through the AI engine. That was a seed to spark something new. Like, how do we make something be new and familiar? And so, we found through putting those ERS and archival things that feel Reebok through that AI lens was a seed to like, “Oh, find something that sparks joy and your eye gravitates to, and then use that as a springboard to create a whole shoe.”

So, that was how we did it. I think we were looking at Premier Road Modern, the dad shoe stuff, too.

Those were working for us, and that trend. So, if we’re thinking about players we wanted to sign, what would they want to wear from us? Like, we make a lot of stuff for a lot of different kinds of people, but we’re thinking about the 17 to 20-year-old kid. What would they be interested from in Reebok in trend and culture?

Yeah. You mentioned that, but could you describe any of the tech features on the shoe besides the ERS cushioning?
The most obvious one is the upper, because it’s got the exoskeleton construction. And I think if you were to look at shoes in the past, they would be stitched leather. Just bringing those thoughts about, “Why do those things exist?” For reinforcement and breathability.

So, bringing those things into one layer, and then thinking about it as like, “Well, we don’t want to make something hard either. It needs to be protective and breathable. It needs to be supportive and containing.”

That’s why shoes look the way they do, because they provide some kind of benefit. And then finding a way to modernize those needs and putting them into one shape, one form, which I think really draws down into something that I feel is unique and ownable about the Reebok aesthetic, especially in basketball, and the inspiration for the first colorway.

We talk about the Mobius design language, which goes back to the E. Scott Morris shoes from the ’90s. Like, the black and white, the Shaqnosis, the Kemps, the Kamikazes. Like, those things that feel really Reebok.

ESM, he visits from time to time, and he was talking about, “Well, if you’re going to do this, don’t just copy what I did. Do something new.”

So, the idea was like, “How do we take that idea about visual motion and capture that in a new way?” And I think that’s what resulted in the aesthetic for the upper for Engine A. It started as black and white, because that’s the Mobius language, and then bringing that Premier Y2K vibe made it silver.

And then when you see it on court, it’s really, really bright. Being there for the Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark game, I had no idea that it was going to be as bright as it was. Because I don’t design under lights like that. We want to capture something that feels like Reebok that you can see as Reebok from the stands. But doesn’t have just the logo slapped on it real big.

You mentioned Angel Reese. Did she give performance input to the shoe while you were designing it, or feedback, or wear-testing?
She got to wear it in advance. She was wearing the Solution, I think, before. She was a big inspiration to what we were building. Like, how she plays, and the cut of shoe she likes to wear.

And the shoe wasn’t ready for her in her size as we developed it. Just functionally, that’s just not how we’re able to build basketball shoes at the moment. We don’t want to give her something that would injure her.

So, as we go through the process, not knowing the answers to, “Will it work?” questions. Like, we build in a different size and we just test. We have a more analytical, scientific testing mechanism. So the results are repeatable.

But, yeah. We were really looking at the modern game and how she trains and plays as an inspiration for what we were trying to build. And what we’re trying to build going forward. I think the shoe is, kind of, for everyone. Like, the first thing we build is like, “It needs to work for all kinds of players.”

And it’s more of a generalist construction. So, it’s not specifically attuned to her needs, but it encompasses her style of play, and then also everybody else.

You mentioned Shaq asking whether it should be low cut, or not. With him and Allen Iverson being involved in the business, did you feel any pressure showing them the finished product on what their thoughts would be on it?
Yeah. Tons. I had met AI before, but I hadn’t. And Shaq. I hadn’t worked with them. I’m an industry insider. I just know too much about too much. And people like Angel and Shaq and AI, they’re professional basketball players. They know too much about basketball, but they don’t know too much about sneakers at the level of detail that I have to work in. So, it was like, “Well, how about I talk to them about what we’re making and help them see it as real?” When it’s just a sketch, or when it’s an unfinished prototype. 

Firstly, a lot of people respond to color in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily have anticipated. I know how important and powerful it is, but seeing the same shoe in a different color for a lot of people, for some people is like seeing a different shoe. And so, you have to cater to that, and I think one of the unique things about the Engine A, and that you might not have seen quite yet, is it’s toe blockable. You can actually do “Red Toe” stuff to it. “Red Toe,” you can do Question-type blockings to it.

Which is really cool and it’s something when we started showing Iverson stuff, he’s like, “Oh, yeah.” And you see through color how to engage with how people see themselves in the product. Which is probably the coolest part, showing it to Shaq, showing it to Iverson, showing it to Matas Buzelis, or Dink Pate, or Angel, seeing the moment in which they can see themselves in the product, it tells a story about them, or just whatever captures their excitement about color and shape.

When you have someone like that who you’re trying to impress, and you see them actually open the box, and hold the shoe in their hands, and whether they’re excited, or not. Were you there to experience it, or are you waiting with bated breath?
Yeah. Absolutely. There’s a lot of honest stories. Like, the silver colorway, the Mobius colorway, wasn’t everybody’s—even internally—preferred color. And there was a meeting with Angel, and she saw it, and she’s like, “That’s got to be the one,” which is what I wanted, because, to me, it is the black/white Mobius, it is our heritage.

And it’s the most jarring visual. It’s the thing that demands the attention. And she wore silver on draft night. And she’s like, “Oh, that’s for me. That one is for me.” And that’s cool and unique, and as we work with more people, it’s getting to tell their stories, or understand what they gravitate towards, and build stuff that they’re excited about is really cool.