There is a specific kind of energy that happens when Nike puts Kevin Durant and Drake in the same room. It is not a press conference energy. It is not a runway energy. It is the energy of two people who have been at the top of their respective lanes for so long that the only thing left to do is make each other laugh. Nike figured this out. The KD19 campaign figured this out. And the KD19 'Candy Apple' (IH1117-600) listed at The Closet Inc. at CAD $190 across the size run is part of the same story.
Why the KD19 is different from every Durant signature before it
Kevin Durant's signature line with Nike has always been the basketball equivalent of a luxury sedan: long, low, fast, and built for someone who already knows where they are going. The KD19, his 19th signature silhouette and the ongoing flagship of his line, keeps that DNA but cuts the profile. Lower to the ground. Lighter on the foot. The full-length Zoom Air strobel is back, the cushion is responsive without being squishy, and the upper breathes in a way his previous silhouettes did not. It is a shoe built for a player who is past the part of his career where the shoe has to advertise the player. The shoe just has to perform.
And the player is past that part of his career too. Durant is a two-time NBA Champion (2017 and 2018, both with the Golden State Warriors), the 2014 league MVP, a two-time Finals MVP, a four-time scoring champion, and a thirteen-time All-Star. He is also a four-time Olympic gold medalist, with golds in 2012 in London, 2016 in Rio, 2020 in Tokyo, and 2024 in Paris, which puts him in a tier of international basketball resume that almost nobody else in the modern game can match. He is the active leader in points per game among players with 1,000 or more games played. He passed 30,000 career points in 2025. He is on pace to pass Kareem on the all-time list if he stays healthy for two more seasons, which is the kind of sentence you do not get to write about most living players. The KD19 is the silhouette built to walk into that company. It does not have to shout.
How Drake ended up in the campaign
In May of 2026, Nike dropped a campaign for the KD19 with Kevin Durant and Drake sharing the screen, a comedy-driven ad built around Drake playing a Yes Man who shows up at KD's door to personally deliver the new colorway. The ad's framing was a fictional Nike delivery driver who had supposedly been turned away three times before finally getting KD to sign for the shoes. The bit was the joke, but the product underneath the joke was real: the KD19 was rolling into its next phase, and Nike wanted the rollout to feel less like a sneaker drop and more like a moment between two people who genuinely like each other.
The Candyman hook that runs through the campaign, with Drake at the door, Kevin opening the box, the shoes landing, the line landing, is the kind of chemistry that does not need a script to feel real. Durant has talked publicly about being a Drake fan for a decade. Drake has talked publicly about wearing Durant's shoes since the KD line was young. Putting them in a commercial together was not a brand partnership decision so much as it was a friendship finally being given a budget. The Closet Inc. lists the Candy Apple colorway (IH1117-600) that the campaign rolled out alongside, priced at CAD $190 across the size run. (The product is currently archived at TCI while restock timing is being confirmed — once it flips to live, the same SKU is the one we ship.) It is the first time the candyman framing has shown up in the regular colorway rotation rather than as a one-off collab.
What Candy Apple actually is
The official colorway name on Nike's release is University Red, with University Gold and Stadium Green as the secondary tones, the kind of three-color split that reads as a college palette without naming a specific school. (We call it 'Candy Apple' on our site and in this article — same shoe, our house name.) It is part of the broader candy-bright run Nike has been putting the KD19 through this year, a series of colorways that lean into the saturated, almost artificial reds, oranges, and purples that have come to define the silhouette's second year. The candy framing is not an accident. Nike knows what it is doing.
What the Candy Apple gets right is that it does not try to look like anything other than a basketball shoe in a red uniform. No gradient. No off-white aging. The red is the red, the gold hits are the gold hits, the green is the green. It is a colorway that wants to be worn on a court, and it wants to be worn on a court by someone who does not need the shoe to make a statement for them. That is a pretty specific customer, and Kevin Durant is that customer.
What this means for the rest of the year
The KD19 campaign with Drake is the setup, not the punchline. The follow-up is the NOCTA x Nike KD 19 Pack, Drake's NOCTA sub-label and Nike Basketball teaming up on a real, named collaboration, with Purple and Orange colorways carrying the NOCTA sword branding. The pack is anticipated for Fall 2026 and will include matching apparel. The Closet Inc. will carry the colorways as they land. In the meantime, the Candy Apple (IH1117-600) is the version of the KD19 that the candyman rollout was actually built around, and the one in our catalog at CAD $190 across the size run once it flips back to live.
Two colorways in the family, one in your hands, one coming. That is how Nike wants you to think about the KD19 this year: not as a single shoe, but as a lineup. The Closet Inc. has the lineup (or will as soon as the Candy Apple flips back to live). The rest is just waiting on the calendar.