Nike Basketball Channeled 2010s Energy with All-Star Warning Label Pack

If you made it to Los Angeles for NBA All-Star Weekend 2026, hopefully you brought a few stacks with you. Outside of the City of Angels already being a notorious wallet drain, footwear brands brought out the big guns for the festivities, from exclusive pairs to early releases and everything in between. But beyond killer activations from Jordan Brand and Converse, Nike Basketball proved that performance basketball sneakers still hold a place in the lifestyle and streetwear realms.

Last year, Nike dropped a “Black Label” collection of sneakers using signature athletes’ models and a few inline silhouettes, but the release came and went without much demand. Some pairs even sat on Nike’s website for a few weeks, even each pair was limited to the birth year of each athletea. This year, they went ultra-lux and blinged out the “Warning Label” pack, featuring all of their signature athletes, including LeBron James, Kevin Durant, A’ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, Devin Booker, Ja Morant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Kobe Bryant, among others. Every single one of Nike’s biggest stars received at least one release in the pack, and Nike athlete Victor Wembanyama (who will likely get his own model in the future) received his own GT Cut 4 PE. On top of athlete-tied colorways, Nike also gave the relatively new GT Future a makeover in the collection.

The only way to cop these LX versions of the Warning Label collection was to be on the ground in Los Angeles over All-Star Weekend. Nike’s takeover of Crenshaw High School, aptly named The Shaw, saw the Swoosh transform the students’ lunch area into a SNKRS Cafeteria where customers could line up like they were back in freshman year, waiting for a chance to get their pizza before the bell rang. Over two days, Nike released parts of the Warning Label pack here, but Foot Locker also got in on the action at its LA Live activation.

Let's be honest. When was the last time Nike Basketball sneakers caused a frenzy, with customers lining up for hours and resale prices skyrocketing over $1,000 for select pairs (we’re looking at you, Kobe 3 Low)? Our memory brings us back to the early 2010s, a time when Nike Basketball was truly in its bag. Some look to this five-year stretch as a golden age of sorts for the label, and they’re right to think so.

Plenty of grail-status Nike Basketball models and colorways hit shelves in this period, like the Galaxy Pack featuring the Foamposite, KD 4, Kobe 7, and LeBron 9. Now, we’re not saying the Warning Label collection is as good, or even better, than the Galaxy Pack or other 2010s releases, but it’s the closest we’ve come to that feeling of coveted Nike Basketball products since that era. Customers in 2012 were lining up overnight to secure a chance at owning pairs like the Galaxy Foams, and in 2026, you had All-Star Weekend attendees lined up all over Los Angeles to cop the latest from the label.

Nike Basketball never really went away in terms of its output; there are a ton of performance models that hoopers love that have been released in the last decade-plus. It’s just that the lifestyle side of basketball has subsided significantly. Chalk that up to trends shifting, but we really felt a 2010s energy around the Warning Label pack. It was the talk of the town throughout All-Star.

You had to put in the work to cop any of the pairs, as there was no online component to these drops. In the last few years, Nike would have loaded a SNKRS Pass, and you could try and cop from your Airbnb or hotel. Big whoop. You went about your day if you didn’t hit, or if you did, you would head to the pick-up point and stand in line with a guaranteed W. There are pros and cons to this method, but the energy that comes from having to wait in line is like no other.

Does this mean Nike is going to transition away from online-centric releases? No. That will be the new norm thanks to the advent of technology, but for special occasions and releases like this, you bet Nike will see how successful this weekend was and take that into consideration for future drops.

Nicholas Vlahos

Sneakerhead from South Florida who turned his passion into a career. When not writing for Sole Retriever, I enjoy attending concerts, catching the latest movies, and trying new food. Email: nick@soleretriever.com