ANTA releases the KAIBRID “Macao Spades” on October 10, and unlike almost everything else in Kyrie Irving’s signature line it will be available in one place. Not one website. One store, the ANTA location in Beverly Hills. For a brand that has spent the past two years trying to convince American buyers that its signature shoes are actually purchasable, that is a strange and deliberate choice, and it is the most interesting thing about the release.
The KAIBRID is the model in Irving’s ANTA line that this site has never written about, which is worth saying out loud rather than quietly fixing. The KAI 1, KAI 2 and KAI 3 have all had colorways covered here and elsewhere, including the “Kai Feng” and the “Alchemist”. The KAIBRID has moved through the same period without that attention in the American market, and ANTA has not pushed it the way it pushes the numbered signatures. The photography for the Spades shows a low-cut basketball shoe with a strap crossing the midfoot over the lacing, which is not a construction the numbered KAI models use. On the evidence of the pictures alone, the KAIBRID is doing something separate inside the line rather than serving as an overflow silhouette for colorways the main shoe cannot absorb.
The Spades runs blue through most of the upper with orange worked into the forefoot panels and the lateral logo picked out in silver. ANTA’s release promises pearlized finishes, speckled textures and metallic accents, and the product photography supports all three. The blue carries a visible speckle across it, the paler panels have a pearlescent cast rather than a flat finish, and the side logo reads as chrome instead of print. The outsole is the most distinctive part of the shoe, a pale translucent blue with orange traction arrows laid across the forefoot and a black diamond window set at the pivot point. Even the box is treated as an object, matte black with a kaleidoscope rosette printed across the lid. What ANTA does not say anywhere is what the upper is actually made of, which is the same gap its KAI 3 “Hearts” release leaves open on the same day.
The campaign imagery complicates the picture a little. Irving is photographed holding more pairs than this announcement names, including an orange shoe that ANTA does not describe anywhere in the release. Since the brand says Macao editions of the KAI 1 and KAI 2 are still to come, the likeliest explanation is that the shoot covered the entire pack while the announcement covers half of it. ANTA has not confirmed that, and the shoe is not identified in any caption, so it is noted here rather than named.
The single-door release is the part worth arguing about. ANTA’s entire American pitch has been availability. The “Alchemist” reaching Dick’s and Scheels was treated as a milestone on this site because it meant the shoes existed somewhere other than import listings, and the argument for taking ANTA’s basketball work seriously has always run through whether anyone can buy it. Putting the Spades in one Beverly Hills store reverses that, and it does so on the stranger and less familiar of the two shoes.
There is a reasonable case for the decision. A single door makes an object feel like an object, it produces a line and a photograph, and it costs the brand very little. There is also a less generous reading, which is that ANTA has not yet built the American distribution to put a hybrid basketball shoe into general release and has chosen to present the constraint as a concept. Both readings can be true at once. The “Hearts” going to ANTA.com on the same morning is the tell, because it says the brand knows exactly which of the two shoes it is equipped to sell at scale.
The pack is the other thing worth noticing. It runs across four models in Irving’s line, two of which are previous signatures rather than the current one, all dressed for a two-game exhibition series. American brands gave up that kind of attention to a back catalogue years ago, and treat a signature shoe as finished the week its successor ships.
The Spades is $150, fifteen dollars above the KAI 3 “Hearts” that lands beside it and still well under most American signature basketball shoes. This site covered a Kobe 10 Protro colorway at $200 earlier in the autumn and an Air Foamposite Pro Premium at $250 last week. That gap matters less than it normally would, because a shoe sold through one store is priced by the resale market rather than by its retail within a day of landing. The $150 is the number ANTA is asking. It is not likely to be the number anyone outside Los Angeles ends up paying.
The ANTA KAIBRID “Macao Spades” releases October 10 at $150, exclusively at ANTA Beverly Hills. The KAI 3 “Macao Hearts” arrives the same day at $135 through ANTA.com. ANTA has not published a style code for either shoe. Macao editions of the KAI 1 and KAI 2 are scheduled to follow in the coming months to complete a four-shoe pack, and the campaign photography already shows Irving holding more pairs than the two that have been announced.
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