Larry Bird and Magic Johnson set the blueprint for modern basketball rivalries. They first crossed paths in the 1979 NCAA championship game—with Magic’s Michigan State edging Bird’s undefeated Indiana State—before both entering the NBA later that year, trading championships back and forth with the Celtics and Lakers throughout the ’80s, and raising the profile of the league exponentially in the process. Along the way, the duo also managed to raise the bar for hoops sneaker endorsements with the legendary Converse Weapon—which is getting a bold new remix this week from the menswear gods at Engineered Garments.

In 1986, though Nike and Michael Jordan were already in the process of revolutionizing the signature sneaker market forever, Converse remained the undisputed top dog in the basketball shoe game. Both Bird and Johnson—at that stage at the peak of their powers and popularity, with five titles between them—were signed to the brand, alongside a slew of major stars like Isiah Thomas, Kevin McHale, Mark Aguirre, and Bernard King. All of those players appeared together in a commercial for the Weapon, which quickly became one of the most widely worn silhouettes in the league. But it was the versions worn by Magic and Larry—a flashy Lakers purple and gold for the former, a stark black and white for the latter—that reached true icon status among sneakerheads.

The brand last revived the Weapon in 2024, with some help from reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and have kept their classic model in consistent rotation since then. Now, for Engineered Garments’s first Converse linkup in nearly a decade, Bird and Johnson’s beloved colorways are back in a new low-top iteration.