Air Jordan 13 ‘Flint’ Returns, and 2020 Was Not Its First Run

The Air Jordan 13 “Flint” came back August 1 at $215, and it was still live on Nike’s site in September, which by itself separates it from most of Jordan Brand’s 2026 retro calendar. The more useful thing about this release is what covering it turns up. Two claims that have followed this shoe around for years, including in the earlier version of this post, do not survive a check against Nike’s own material. One is who designed it. The other is when the colorway actually started.

The Air Jordan 13 arrived in 1997 as the first sneaker released under the Jordan Brand name rather than as a Nike basketball shoe, and Tinker Hatfield designed it. An earlier version of this post credited it to Peter Moore. That is wrong, and it is worth correcting in plain sight. Moore designed the Air Jordan 1 and the Wings logo, and he had left Nike a decade before the 13 existed. It was also the first Air Jordan drawn on a computer rather than by hand. Hatfield built the 13 around a black panther idea, which is why the outsole reads as a paw and why the holographic disc on the collar is meant to be an eye. Michael Jordan wore the 13 through the 1997-98 season, the year Chicago won its sixth title, but he switched into the Air Jordan 14 for the Finals. The Bulls beat Utah 4-2, and Jordan’s 45-point Game 6, including the shot with 5.2 seconds left, happened in the 14.

Nike lists this pair as the Air Jordan 13 Retro “Flint,” style code IW3808-400, colorway Navy/Flint Grey/White/University Blue. Navy covers most of the upper, flint grey handles the mudguard and the panels around the midfoot, and university blue turns up in the liner and the branding. The reflective mesh sections Hatfield used to suggest fur are still there, the holographic eye still sits on the collar, and Nike’s own product copy credits the ride to Air Zoom cushioning. The colorway is not new either, and that is the second correction. An earlier version of this post described the 2020 release as the original. Flint dates to 1998, where it ran as a high top under style code 136002-441. The 2020 pair, 414571-404, was itself a retro at $190. Calling it the original skips 22 years of the shoe’s history. One more thing the feeds leave out: Jordan never wore Flint in an NBA game. The colorway’s late-nineties visibility came from college guards, Mike Bibby and Khalid El-Amin among them.

What makes the return interesting is what it says about who buys the 13 now. Jordan Brand leans on the 1, the 4 and the 11 for volume, and those releases run on hype cycles that peak on the release morning and are over by the afternoon. The 13 does not behave that way. This pair went up August 1 and Nike still had sizes five weeks later, which a few years ago would have read as a miss and now reads more like a shoe with a steady, older audience buying it to wear rather than to flip. That is a more durable position than a sellout, and it is a reasonable explanation for why Flint keeps coming back instead of being retired. The 2020 retro is the tell. ESPN premiered The Last Dance on April 19, 2020 and closed it out on May 17. Flint landed on May 30, thirteen days after the finale, into an audience that had just spent ten episodes watching the 1997-98 season. Jordan Brand does not usually explain its calendar, but that sequence is hard to read as a coincidence, and it is a reminder that the 13 sells on the Bulls’ last year rather than on a colorway story of its own. The 2026 return arrives with no documentary behind it and has held its price anyway. Our Air Jordan 13 “True Red” and Wings coverage shows the range the model has been run through lately.

On price, the 2020 Flint was $190 and this one is $215, a $25 increase across six years. That sits at the upper end of the standard Jordan retro band without crossing into the premium tier. Worth knowing if you go looking: at least one lower-tier feed circulated $210 for this release. Nike’s own product page says $215, and the brand’s number is the one to trust.

Released August 1 at $215 in Navy/Flint Grey/White/University Blue, style code IW3808-400. It was still listed on Nike.com and through SNKRS as of September 9. More on the silhouette sits in our Air Jordan 13 hub, and the rest of the line is in the Air Jordan archive.

Source: Justfreshkicks

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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