The Nike Air Max LeBron VII

Earlier this month, LeBron James spent a weekend in his hometown of Akron, Ohio... which is pretty snooze-worthy news, all by itself (Akron's no New Jersey, after all). But what made the weekend of August 9th all kinds of wonderful for us GearHead types is what LeBron brought with him to Akron: THE LATEST INSTALLMENT IN HIS SIGNATURE SNEAKER LINE!

For those of you that want to skip the chit-chat and see the pics, click "More" and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Now before I throw all kinds of pleasant adjectives at The King's new kicks, a disclaimer: those of you who've been following The DNJ (aka, me) know I was pretty hard on LeBron when he looked like the primary suspect in WitnessGate. Or JamGate. Or any other pet name you and your friends use to describe "LeBron getting dunked on and confiscating the footage". The idea that he might have confiscated tapes of the infamous dunk (it turned out he didn't; yay!) didn't sit well with me at the time.

That said, after seeing the Air Max Lebron VII... not only would I like to apologize for rushing to judgement, I'd also like to say, "LeBron, you can confiscate all impending footage of the Nets 2009-10 season (did I mention I think their new "jersey" promotion stinks?), and I still wouldn't be mad at you. Not after seeing the VII's." I don't think anyone would be mad at you for confiscating Nets footage, actually... but whatever...

These kicks are AWESOME!

Check out the pics below and see for yourself. My friends at Nike were nice enough to hook me up with concept sketches of the sneaker in its early stages AND photos of the finished product.

And for you hardcore sneaker heads... Nike also sent over video of LeBron and designer Jason Petrie detailing the new sneaker's in's and out's. It's pretty cool stuff, I gotta say.

When you're done checking out the clip and the pics, CLICK HERE to let me know what you think about the LeBron VII.