Ja Morant Gets His First High-Top

Every guard in the league plays low now. The signature high-top — the shoe that defined basketball footwear for two decades — quietly died years ago, and nobody at Nike Basketball had bothered to bring it back. Until Ja Morant asked for one, and dressed it up for Halloween.

The Ja 4 High “Zombie” lands Saturday, October 31, at $180, and it is two firsts in one box: the first high-top of Morant's signature line, and the first signature high-top Nike Basketball has released in over five years. Sneaker News puts the drought in perspective — the LeBron 19 was the last arguable signature high-top, and that was more than five years ago. Before that, the high-top died by inches: Steve Nash went low, Kobe Bryant made the low-top a philosophy, and the whole league followed them down.

A shroud, a zipper, and a warning

Morant did not ease into the silhouette. The High takes the Ja 4 and wraps it in an all-encompassing shroud that climbs the ankle and zips shut over the laces — a move with a lineage, echoing the zippered cover the Air Jordan 28 made famous, except nobody on that shoe was dressed as the undead. The shroud carries the detail the whole shoe is built around: Ja's signature arrow logo, repeated as raised triangular studs that flood the entire upper, big at the rear and shrinking toward the toe.

The colorway does the Halloween work before the details even start: University Red and Bright Crimson, nearly head to toe, the red running so deep that Sole Retriever notes it matches Morant's new Portland threads. The contrast comes in metallic Medium Olive — the reverse Swoosh and the JA-frame shank at the midfoot — and the official colorway string hides Cobalt Bliss and Black in the fine print, which is where the insole art lives. Underneath the costume it is still a guard's shoe: the Ja 4's Cushlon 3.0 foam carries over from the low.

The storytelling is in the small print. The zipper tape reads CALL TWELVE, Morant's number turned into an order. The heel pull tabs finish the sentence — DON'T on one shoe, SLEEP on the other. And the insoles, the part nobody sees until the box opens, carry graffiti TWELVE TIME branding and a zombie-faced Ja graphic at the heel: the Halloween payoff, hidden where only the buyer finds it.

The high-top died by inches — Nash went low, Kobe made the low a philosophy, and the league followed. Ja just brought it back as a costume.

Not the one that already dropped

One warning before Saturday: this is not the Ja 4 “Zombie” that released October 23. That shoe — $140, low-top — was the first half of Morant's Halloween two-piece; SI notes he is the only player in Nike's 2026 Halloween collection with two models. The High is the second half: a different, taller build, a different date, and a $180 tag that sits $40 above the base Ja 4's $130–$140 sticker. It arrives in unisex sizing, style code IQ3864-600, with listings pointing to a 10 AM ET launch on SNKRS and Nike.com, plus Foot Locker and select Nike Basketball retailers.

Whether it sells like a costume or like a comeback is Saturday's question. Either way, the drought is over — the signature high-top exists again, and it took the league's most airborne guard, dressed head to toe in red, to resurrect it on Halloween.