New Balance x Kawhi Leonard: "No Emotions Are Emotions"

After the already legendary ''Fun Guy’’ and ’’Board Man Gets Paid’’, New Balance is ready to release a third t-shirt for the collection dedicated to their most representative man for basketball, Kawhi Leonard.

Highlighting the stoic and impenetrable character of the NBA star, it reads "No Emotions Are Emotions" on the front, with the phrase "Don’t Be Mad" on the back. The thesis of the shirt is that there is no general state of existence without emotions. But the lack of emotions is already an emotion in itself, so much so that the character of the number 2 of the Clippers - reserved and without great expressive gestures - represents its unique form of existence. For this reason, NB has decided to coin the name of this mood, "Kawhi".

William James, psychologist and philosopher of the late nineteenth century was convinced that emotions could be analyzed and studied: many of us experience joy, sadness, anger, anxiety etc. but there are more complex emotional constructs that could potentially be unique to an individual. This is where we come back to the "No Emotions Are Emotions" theme. Leonard may simply be the first human being in history to be in a constant state of lack of emotion.

The shirt also comes with a second message, "Don't Be Crazy", which does not represent a warning to the emotion itself, but rather the power to free yourself from negative emotion to achieve goals.

Even Plato in the Republic declared that dominating and controlling emotions was the key to unlocking the power of the soul. He was convinced that humans had to work hard to impose reason on emotion, but he also realized that this research was imperfect, so much so that in his last years of life he came to believe that it was not possible to completely separate emotion from reason.

Kawhi Leonard has succeeded where Plato has failed: instead of trying to remove all emotions, he is replacing standard emotions with "Kawhi", an innate lack of emotion to achieve special goals. A Zen-like state, reaching the ''Kawhi'' means excelling without the need for emotional drive and Leonard is giving us the demonstration that it is possible to do it.

The t-shirt is part of the collection "No Emotions Are Emotions" that the Chicago designer Joe Freshgoods dedicated to the Los Angeles star; it will also include a New Balance 992, made of red and pink suede, an OMN1S (the model worn by Leonard on NBA parquet) with the wording "No Emotions" printed on the strap and a matching clothing line, including sweatpants dye, short and long sleeve t-shirts, hoodies and performance apparel.