Blast from the past – Spalding Threat PE
I totally forgot I have this shoes until I was trying to find something else in the storage space in my house. This is not my first pair of Spalding shoes and I wore the general released version years ago and I don’t even remember if I wrote a review on that. Anyway, since I found these PEs now, I have decided to put these on at least for one more time.
Before I go any further, let’s look into the cushioning tech used in the shoes. It is a thing called “D3O”, a patented material owned by a UK company. This material has been widely used in motor sports for years already. Check out the demos in the links below:
Pretty amazing stuff, right? This is not the first shoes used this tech. If I remember correctly, this other small brand, Ball’N, also used D3O in the midsole for impact protection. I actually had a pair of the Ball’N shoes years ago and played in them. Again, I don’t remember if I did review on that as well.
Anyway, let’s go back to the shoes itself. I actually have two pairs of these samples, one is made for Jimmer Fredette when he played for the Kings and the other one, which is the one I played last weekend, made for Mario Chalmers when he played for the Heats. The shoes kind felt like the Hyperdunk 2009, but with better ankle support in general. This is a pair of size 13, and does fit bigger than usual, at least a half size bigger. However, I don’t have choice here because these samples only come in size 13. Here comes another fact that most of you probably do not know. Most of the shoe brands, if not all, makes regular samples in men’s size 9 and women’s size 7. However, for player samples, they make most of them in size 13. I am not sure why, but that is the size of samples I have been getting for the past 20 some years.
Because of the larger fit, the toe box does have a bit dead space, but not to a point that would make me feel discomfort. The other thing is that because it has 8 pairs of lace holes that go all the way to the top, once I laced them all up, it locks down my foot pretty well. The heel cup is another strange part of this pair. For some reason, I feel the heel cup was made a bit too wide, so I could feel my heel was moving a bit inside, even with the fact that I have laced up the shoes all the way to the last hole. But, again, this is an another minor issue on the fit that won’t break the deal anyway.
Let’s talk about the cushioning. First of all, to be honest with you, I don’t really know if this pair really has the D3O material in the midsole. If you haven’t noticed that already, the D3O in the demonstrations and general released shoes are colored in orange, but both of my pairs of samples do not show that color at all. However, even without having the real D3O, the cushioning of the shoes is adequate. The interesting thing is that it feels the midsole was made of two different types of materials with different densities. The forefoot felt like it has a soft crash pad inserted under my ball. It was pretty soft and provided me with a lot of cushioning when I landed. However, the back end of the midsole felt bit firmer, but still soft enough without making me feel that I was landed on something really hard. In general, I like the cushioning set up for sure.
The overall support of the shoes is really good. You can easily see that Spalding uses layers of materials on the shoes, and the most importantly, majority of the body is comprised of heat pressed material that feels like plastic. This is nothing unusual for a pair of shoes that coming out at that time frame, and that is the other reason why I said it felt like Hyperdunk 2009 all over.
To have a quick sum up, I think Spalding did a really good job to put this one out and I wish they could keep making shoes. To be honest with you, if you cover the logo “S” up, I bet most of you would like the overall design of this pair. This is why I keep preaching on that you have to give other brands at least a shot and stop just wearing like Nike or Adidas only. However, you probably won’t be able to find another pair of this Spalding anyway, since they are just long gone.