The Harden Vol. 1 Comes Back With One Change, and adidas Calls It a Restomod

James Harden’s first signature shoe returns on October 15, ten years after it arrived as the opening argument in one of the most expensive endorsement moves adidas has ever made. The Harden Vol. 1 “Pioneer” comes back in the black, red and white it launched in, with the angled lacing, the pale leather toe cap and the logo on the lateral side all where they were. One thing underneath has changed. For the rest of it, adidas has borrowed a word from car culture.

The Vol. 1 landed in late 2016, after Harden left Nike for a deal that made him the face of an adidas basketball line still rebuilding. The shoe that followed was not a general silhouette with a name stamped on it. It was shaped around a guard who scored by stopping, drawing contact and changing direction in small spaces rather than by jumping over people, and the proportions showed it. The forefoot is wide, the collar is cut low, and the lacing runs at an angle across the throat rather than straight up the middle, which pulls the upper down over the top of the foot instead of cinching it from both sides. adidas talked about Harden’s involvement in the design more openly than brands usually did then, and said the detailing drew on his journey, his family and the way he plays. For a first signature shoe that was unusual positioning, selling one player’s specificity rather than a category. It also landed into a market that had just watched adidas take Boost from a running technology to a cultural one, and the Vol. 1 was the attempt to spend that credibility on the hardwood.

The 2026 version is what adidas is calling a Restomod, which in cars means an original body kept intact with modern mechanicals underneath it. Here that is close to literal. The brand says the single real change is Hyperboost in the midsole, swapped in for a lighter feel and more return underfoot, and that the premium leather toe cap, the pressure mapping outsole, the three-stripe execution and Harden’s logo all carry over. The press photography backs that up. The toe cap photographs as a clean off-white block against a black upper, the laces are red through the angled eyestay, and a red Harden mark sits on the lateral midfoot above a thin red line in the midsole. The upper is a mix of smooth and textured black panels rather than a single material, the heel sits low and square behind an unpadded collar line, and the outsole visible in the courtside frames is a flat, patterned slab with no visible cage or shank. Every frame reads as a 2016 basketball shoe, which is the point of the exercise. “Bringing it back almost exactly how it was, but updating the performance with Hyperboost, feels like the right way to celebrate it,” Harden said in the release.

What makes this worth attention is that adidas is doing it at all. Signature basketball shoes rarely come back, because the model only means something while the player is still the argument for it, and most lines bury their early entries the moment the next one ships. Harden is in the back half of his career and adidas has already reached Volume 10, so reviving Volume 1 is a bet that the shoe outlived the season it was built for. There is a case for it. The Vol. 1 is the entry in the line people still bring up, and the Restomod framing is adidas conceding that the original design was finished and only the foam had dated. That is a more honest position than the usual retro, which quietly reshapes the last and hopes nobody measures. It also leaves adidas somewhere awkward, because a ten-year-old silhouette coming back unaltered is an implicit verdict on the nine that followed it.

Retail is $140, the same number the Vol. 1 carried in 2016. A decade of flat pricing on a performance basketball shoe is close to unheard of, and it lands this well under where signature basketball currently sits. The Harden Volume 10 “Ray” covered here last month lists at $170, and Nike’s signature basketball models have been climbing for years. Resale is the softer part of the argument. The original has traded close to retail for a long stretch, so this is priced as a shoe adidas expects people to wear rather than hold, which is the right call and a rare one on an anniversary release.

The Harden Vol. 1 “Pioneer” releases globally on October 15 at adidas.com and select retailers, including Foot Locker. Retail is $140, and the pair is listed under style code LC5090. adidas released it in China first, on August 26, timed to Harden’s birthday, ahead of the global launch.

Written by

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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