Release of “Rip City” D Lillard 2 pushed back at Portland area Foot Locker’s
The “Rip City” colorway of the adidas D Lillard 2
The Columbian has learned that the release date of the Rip City colorway of the second iteration of Damian Lillard’s signature shoe, the “D Lillard 2,” has been pushed back at several local area Foot Locker stores. The shoes will also not be released tomorrow, Jan. 22, at the adidas employee store.
According to multiple area stores, there was an email sent to Foot Locker stores in the Portland area that the shoe release for the D Lillard 2 “was cancelled.”
According to one source, “some of the pairs were defective,” pushing back the release date and forcing them to pull pairs off the shelves.
Credit to Dane Carbaugh, the host of Baseline Rewind and friend of the blog, for bringing this to our attention first. He was first to report a manufacturing issue which has pushed back the release of the shoe.
Foot Locker stores in the state of Oregon, such as the Foot Locker at Washington Square, had been selling the Rip City colorway of the D Lillard 2 since December 26. That was deemed a “limited release.” Then Thursday, the day before the scheduled official release, both the Washington Square and Lloyd Center locations were told to pull their displays and plans for the shoe’s release in all colors until further notice. The adidas employee store will also not be selling any colorways of the D Lillard 2’s tomorrow.
The news of the postponed release will likely be a bummer to lots of fans, of Lillard, the Blazers and sneakers, who were looking to pick up a pair tomorrow when the release was originally scheduled, as we reported when the shoe was first unveiled.
UPDATE Jan. 22 5:00 PM: Lillard tweeted a link to an adidas page that lays out the release dates for all of Lillard’s shoes. The Rip City colorway will be released in early February, but the first available shoe will be the “Aurora Borealis” on Jan. 28.
Jan. 22 12:28 PM: Casey Holdahl of TrailBlazers.com is reporting that the D Lillard 2 will be released in early February.
Jan. 22 2016, 9:22 AM: The D Lillard 2’s are not available for purchase on adidas.com. But they do have a place where you can sign up for updates for when they come available. We haven’t heard any updates about the Portland area. The Salem Center Foot Locker in Salem, OR, does, however, claim to have the D Lillard 2 in stock.
There’s no official word from Lillard or adidas yet on when the shoe official release date will be. We will update this story as more details become available.
Erik Gundersen
Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.