Total eclipses used to be associated with all kinds of weird goings on, and Nike decided to honour that tradition this week. Almost eclipsing the astronomical event itself, it jumped on solar eclipse fever as the perfect opportunity to tease another extraterrestrial phenomenon: an apparent new logo for its partnership with NBA player Victor Wembanyama.
Revealed in the form of a crop circle, the Wemby logo design depicts a basketball decorated with Nike swooshes (see our pick of the best sports logos) and an alien face – a reference to the player's nickname and the upcoming Nike GT Hustle 2 "Alien" sneakers.
Nike's logo tease might be a little cryptic, and it doesn't mention Wemby But if anyone didn't get the alien reference, there's a further clue in the text, which claims that the crop circle is "somewhere in south Texas," home of Wembanyama's team, the San Antonio Spurs.
The French basketball player signed with Nike before moving to the US in an apparel deal now rumoured to be worth $100m. The player's 'Alien' nickname was coined by LeBron James, who said in a press conference in 2022: “Everybody’s been a unicorn over the last few years, but he’s more like an alien." The reference was quickly taken up by fans. It's now rumoured that Nike will soon release a retail version of the Nike GT Hustle 2 “Alien” shoe that it designed for Wemby, and it seems the solar eclipse provided the opportunity for a perfectly timed tease.
The shoe features suitably cosmic design references, with a black/green mudguard pattern and glow-in-the-dark outsoles, with the phrase 'Be unique every day' printed across the bottom of them. The logo on the shoe as we've seen it so far is not the design teased in the crop circle but a more simple alien face, based on the design that Wemby had begun drawing on his shoes.
For more sporting design inspiration, see our pick of the best NBA logos.
