FirstCuts: Kobe's Hyperdunks Are Omnipresent

The one downer of the holiday weekend -- other than the fact I worked Sunday and Monday -- was the fact that this "viral" video hit the web and we were all out of the office.

Let me just say this: Whoever is doing the marketing for Kobe Bryant and the Nike Hyperdunk is absolutely knocking it out of the park. I went back to YouTube and checked out the video with the highest view total from the original Aston Martin jump: 3,447,262 and counting as of Monday. That doesn't even take into account dozens -- if not hundreds -- of other copies of the video that are on YouTube and other sites, racking up hits in the hundreds of thousands.

And the Hyperdunks weren't just invading the internet again this weekend, they were also prominent in the Game 2 postgame for the Western Conference finals. Lamar Odom changed out of his Huarache Elites and into the Hyperdunks for the second half.

For those of us not cool enough to 1.) play for the Lakers and 2.) have a shoe deal, the House of Hoops in Harlem hit a few lucky shoeheads with a big release this past weekend. 12 pairs of home, and 12 pairs of aways were made available in the Laker colorways, but if you want 'em, you'll have to fork over big bucks on eBay at this point. Most of the pairs are at $500-plus with time remaining in the auctions.

And finally, here's the real genius in all this Kobe-Hyperdunk marketing hysteria: Bryant isn't even wearing them. In Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, Kobe switched from the Hyperdunk back to the Zoom Kobe III and has stayed in them since.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.