adidas and BAPE announced a new collection on November 2 built around basketball in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the shoe at the center of it is not from that era at all. The footwear is the Crazy Energy+, a performance model adidas put into the line earlier this year, wrapped in a metallic read of BAPE’s COLOR CAMO. It arrives November 7 with Jalen Williams fronting the campaign. Everything about the collection points backwards except the thing you put on your feet.
The Crazy Energy+ is one of the newer entries in adidas Basketball’s non-signature catalogue, which is the part of the line that has to earn attention without a name attached to it. It landed earlier in 2026 in a carbon-metallic makeup and a dazzle camo, built on LIGHTSTRIKE Pro cushioning under a molded upper with sculptural overlays that cut above the base, and House of Heat reads the midsole as a dual-foam setup pairing LIGHTSTRIKE with LIGHTSTRIKE Pro rather than the Pro foam alone. The Crazy name is the oldest thing about it. adidas has been running that label on basketball shoes since the Crazy 1, and Sneaker Freaker traces the family from there through the Crazy IIInfinity, though none of the coverage claims the Energy+ as a direct descendant of any single one. It is a new shape carrying an old surname, which is a reasonable description of most of what adidas Basketball has been shipping lately.
BAPE’s treatment is a metallic COLOR CAMO SILVER print laid across the whole upper, a knitted “WGM” lace overlay, and two interchangeable lace options in the box. The silver reads cold rather than loud in the press frames, which is a different register from the purple running through the rest of the collection. That purple is the point everywhere else. The apparel leans on a black varsity jacket with purple accents, gold studs and a chenille “World Gone Mad” back panel, a reversible mesh hoodie carrying COLOR CAMO outside with a tonal shark face on the hood and an all-over STA print within, reversible Adibreak track pants, a BABY MILO tee and a BABY MILO basketball bag. adidas calls the purple a nod to BAPE’s early-2000s run, which is the same period the collection takes its basketball cues from.
The choice of shoe is what separates this from the rest of the category. A nostalgia collaboration almost always reaches for an archive silhouette, because the shoe does half the referencing by existing. BAPE knows that better than anyone, since the STA has been doing exactly that job for the brand for over twenty years. Putting a 2000s print on a 2026 performance basketball shoe inverts the formula and asks the graphic to carry the memory on its own. The casting follows the same logic rather than contradicting it. Jalen Williams is not a campaign face bolted onto a lifestyle drop. D5 MAG reported back in July that he would be wearing the Crazy Energy on court through the NBA season, so adidas is pointing at a player already in the shoe rather than renting a name for the photographs.
The distribution says something too. This is going out through the CONFIRMED app via select retailers and through BAPE’s own stores and website, which is a narrow lane rather than a wide one, and it keeps the release inside the two audiences that already care. adidas notes in the same announcement that the last time these two worked together it was around football, timed to last summer’s global tournament, so the partnership is running as a recurring seasonal thing rather than a one-off reunion. Moving it from football to basketball in a single year is a reasonable test of whether the camo sells on its own or whether it needs the sport underneath it to be the one BAPE is historically tied to.
Neither adidas nor BAPE has announced what this costs, and that is the one piece of the picture missing. The base Crazy Energy+ is a useful floor, though the outlets do not agree on where that floor sits. Sneaker News and Sneaker Freaker both carry $150 in their body copy and $155 in their release boxes for the same shoe, which is a ten dollar spread on a figure that should be settled by now. BAPE collaborations historically land above the general-release version of whatever they touch, so a figure under the base model would be the surprise rather than a figure above it. Treat any number circulating ahead of November 7 as unconfirmed.
The adidas and BAPE collection releases November 7 through the adidas CONFIRMED app via select retailers, at BAPE STORE locations and on BAPE.COM. adidas has not published a style code for the Crazy Energy+ colorway and has not published pricing for any piece in the range, so both are open questions going into release day.
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