Ye teased a Yeezy basketball shoe in 2018. It arrived by truck in 2020

On 19 Apr 2018 Ye was back on Twitter, posting shoe after shoe, and one of them had a basketball emoji next to it. It was a high-top with the swirling stripes of a 350 V2, a ribbed sole and a tall collar. That’s the first real look anyone got at a Yeezy made for the court.

It’d be almost two years before the public could get a pair. When the Quantum did arrive, it came free, off the back of a truck, in a Chicago February.

A rendering and a ban rumour

Nobody knew how close it was. Complex thought the image looked more like a rendering than a finished shoe. A month earlier Nick Young had told Sole Collector he’d been talking to Ye about a basketball model, and he’d had a rough idea of what was coming.

“It’ll be something different, probably have a thick sole, and a tongue on the shoe or somethin’.” Nick Young, Sole Collector

Ye shared on-foot photos on his own Instagram later that year, and word went round that the NBA would ban it over its reflective heel. The week before launch, Yeezy Mafia leaked that it’d come in two versions: a lifestyle shoe called the QNTM and a performance BSKTBL.

14 Feb 2020: Sherp trucks in the cold

It landed in Ye’s hometown for NBA All-Star Weekend. On 14 Feb 2020 his team drove Sherp all-terrain trucks around Chicago and handed out free pairs, Complex and the Chicago Sun-Times reported. They stopped in Wicker Park and near the United Center. It was close to single digits Fahrenheit, and people didn’t care. Hypebeast reported they chased the trucks down the street.

The Quantum was set for Chicago stores on 16 Feb, the day of the All-Star Game, at the adidas flagship, Tony’s Sports and Notre. It wasn’t quite the court shoe: Hypebeast called it a slightly altered version of the BSKTBL, high-cut, with reflective detailing snaking across the upper and a Boost midsole.

On 15 Feb, the night after the giveaway, Zach LaVine shot the 3-Point Contest at the United Center in a pair, in the Chicago Tribune’s photos. It wasn’t a game, but 22 months after one tweet and a basketball emoji, Ye’s basketball shoe was on an NBA floor.