The Nike Dunk is a basketball-rooted silhouette that has lived three distinct lives: 1985 college-basketball debut, late-1990s skate adoption, and 2020s lifestyle supernova. Designed by Peter Moore — also responsible for the Air Jordan 1 — the Dunk shares DNA with both the AJ1 and the Nike Terminator.
1985 — Be True To Your School
The Dunk launched in 1985 as a college basketball shoe, featured in the "Be True To Your School" campaign. Nike released it in the team colorways of seven major college basketball programs: Arizona, Georgetown, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, St. John's, Syracuse, UNLV, and Villanova. The "BTTYS" colorways have since been retro'd in multiple formats and remain among the most collected original Dunk releases.
2002 — Nike SB and skate culture
Nike entered skateboarding in 2002 with the SB Dunk — a reworked Dunk with enhanced padding, Zoom Air cushioning, and fat tongues designed specifically for skating. The SB Dunk Low "Paris" (2003), "Tiffany" (2005), "What the Dunk" (2007), and Supreme collaborations transformed skate sneakers into collector-tier objects.
2020 — The lifestyle supernova
After a mid-2010s dormant period, Nike relaunched the non-SB Dunk in late 2019 and early 2020 with the Dunk Low "Syracuse," "Kentucky," "Michigan," and other university retros. The combination of nostalgic colorways, lockdown-era sneaker interest, and constrained supply turned the Dunk into 2020-2022's hottest silhouette — virtually every release sold out instantly and resold for multiples of retail.
Core Dunk variants
- Dunk Low — the modern lifestyle workhorse, $115 retail
- Dunk High — the OG 1985 silhouette, $125 retail
- Dunk Low Retro — premium construction matching 1985 spec
- SB Dunk Low/High — skate-specific variants under Nike SB
- Dunk Low Disrupt — exaggerated chunky variant (women's-led)
- Jumbo Dunk — oversized tooling variant
Key collaborations
- Supreme × Nike SB Dunk Low (2002) — the first major streetwear × SB collaboration
- Diamond Supply × Nike SB Dunk "Tiffany" (2005)
- Concepts × Nike SB Dunk "Lobster" series
- Travis Scott × Nike SB Dunk Low (2020)
- Off-White × Nike Dunk Low "50" (2022)
- fragment design × Travis Scott × Air Jordan 1 trilogy also features dunk-adjacent drops
- Social Status, Grateful Dead × Nike SB, Otomo Katsuhiro × Nike SB"