Nike Giannis Freak 6 review

Giannis is back with a new hooper that will conquer your heart if:

• You're looking for a stable shoe that offers great lockdown and containment even on harsh rebounds.
• You want that fantastic mix of bounciness and court feel.
• You change positions often so you need a pair that will give you a little bit of everything.

This Nike pair doesn't offer the best support out there. It doesn't even have a shank, which caught us completely off guard! If you're looking for an affordable all-rounder, the newest Giannis Immortality 4 might be of your liking.

Also, despite its wonderful traction, the outsole of the Giannis Freak 6 lacks durability. If you want to play outdoors, you should have a look at our streetball hoopers collection. If you're looking for something durable and with the much needed support this shoe is lacking, the Nike Ja 1 may be your next partner on the court.

Our caliper returned 27.3 mm when we measured this shoe's heel stack.

It's a score lower than average, and after our playtests, we can say the Giannis Freak 6 doesn't offer the best impact protection. It's not like it lacks cushioning to the point that it becomes uncomfortable, but it's definitely a pair that focuses more on court feel than shock absorption.

At 21.3 mm, our caliper says there's also not a lot of foam between the toes and the court.

But, do you know what there is? A fantastic Air Zoom unit! This detail offered us a bouncy experience, making our toe-offs more springy. This fueled us up and helped us to perform better crossover steps, layups, any kind of fake, and even quicker post-play!

Overall, the Giannis Freak 6 has a low profile and offers great court feel. Following the forefoot and heel stacks, we get a drop of 6.0 mm.

In other words, you won't feel your heel up in the sky! During our wear tests, this Nike pair felt rather flat. But we're not saying it in a bad way! It was flat as in close to the court, which made our moves more precise thanks to the extra control. This setup works wonders for quick players who like to play tricks whilst dribbling.

As we believe the Giannis Freak 6 focuses on quick and controlled plays, we didn't think it would have a super soft foam. And we were right!

Our durometer returned 28.5 HA, which is slightly higher than average. But this doesn't mean the shoe is uncomfortable or anything like that. It just doesn't feel like stepping on a cloud!

This Nike pair features a standard insole. At 4.4 mm, it's slightly thinner than average, which helped reduce the overall weight of the shoe.

The sole flares don't count when we're measuring the toebox width of a shoe! That's why the claws of our caliper don't hug the Giannis Freak 6's whole structure.

At the widest part of the toe area, we measured 100.5 mm, which is slightly lower than average. Despite its spacious platform, we don't believe this upper can comfortably fit wide-toed hoop lovers.

Our second caliper reading just verified it.

It returned 75.6 mm, which means this pair tapers towards the tip. We can confirm it now: wide-feet players should stay away from the Giannis Freak 6!

Following our experience, this shoe feels stable on foot. It's nothing super crazy, but all the inner padding it has, its lower profile, and its firmer foam worked together to make us feel safe.

When we first took the Giannis Freak 6 out of its box, we saw it had a big black piece (in this colorway) right in the middle of its midsole. The first thing we thought was that it could be an outer reinforcement that signaled where the shank of the shoe is. Or any other type or supportive technology.

The answer? Well, it was none! It's just a plastic piece. It might offer some extra stability, but we didn't really feel anything coming from it. In fact, we were pretty disappointed to find out this Nike pair doesn't feature a shank.

The high rubber wall of the Giannis Freak 6 doesn't only add its bits to the overall stability, it also makes it impossible to twist!

Our fingers struggled a lot, so we have decided to give this shoe a perfect 5/5 on our torsional rigidity test.

Making this shoe's heel counter bow to us was also pretty much impossible!

We could move it a slight bit, and that's the only reason why it didn't get the highest grade on this test! All in all, the super padded heel counter earned a well-deserved 4/5 on our heel counter stiffness test.

Another key point of the fantastic overall stability of this shoe is its midsole width.

Our caliper returned 119.1 mm, which makes it way wider than average. Spacious platforms help us a lot when we grab a rebound in traffic and end up collapsing with another player. It's easier to land safely and our feet find their much needed balance way sooner!

However, and quite unexpectedly, this Nike's midsole in the heel is narrower than average.

At 87.3 mm, it definitely didn't help with the overall stability. Nevertheless, we always try to land using our forefoot to keep our joints healthy (especially our knees), so we didn't really feel this shoe's heel affected negatively the overall balance. The forefoot did enough for both!

Our heel-to-toe transitions felt smooth, and we didn't have any problems bending the ball of the foot to go for fakes either.

At 36.6N, the Giannis Freak 6 showed it's more flexible than average. Even with its overall rigid and stable structure, its pliability at the ball of the foot let us go for aggressive layups after we warmed up a bit with no problem.

During our wear tests running up and down the court, we felt the Giannis Freak 6 was not slowing us down. It fact, to us it felt pretty speedy on foot! Nothing crazy, but performance-wise we were quite satisfied.

When we took this Nike pair to our lab, we saw our scale marked 12.3 oz/349.0g, which is a weight lower than average. This translated into quick footwork and comfort, powering up our mobility regardless of the position we played.

The best part is that, despite being on the lighter side, the Giannis Freak 6 is super padded! From the double thick heel counter to the collar and the instep, which has two layers. We felt its comfort and lockdown during our playtests, and that gave us a lot of confidence on the court.

During our wear tests, we didn't feel our feet were burning up with their own heat whilst we ran up and down the court. To verify this and put it into numbers, we took the Giannis Freak 6 to our lab.

Starting with our light test, we could not find any ventilation gaps around the upper. The light couldn't shine through any area!

Nevertheless, when we compared it with the extra hot Air Jordan XXXIX, the Giannis Freak 6 showed us it wouldn't let our feet choke! It began pretty strongly, with a solid column of smoke coming through the toe area and moving towards the tongue. Nevertheless, as the test moved on, it started losing power and consistency.

All in all, we have decided to give this Nike pair a middle ground 3/5 on our breathability test.

Look at our images using the microscope. There's no way that upper material favors airflow!

For our toebox durability test, we always set the Dremel at 5K RPM and 3.2N of force.

We drilled the Giannis Freak 6 for 12 long seconds. Its upper withstood the abrasion, as it managed to survive without a hole. Even though it doesn't have any extra protective layers on top, the upper fought back bravely. Consequently, we have decided to give this shoe a 3/5 on our toebox durability test.

We moved the Dremel all the way back to the heel and started our standardized 4-second torture!

Even though the damage doesn't look that big, if you look closely you'll see the tool actually destroyed a lot of the material. In fact, a blue-ish lower layer is saying hi!

That's why we have decided to give this shoe a 2/5 on our heel padding durability test.

We pressed our durometer against the Giannis Freak 6's outsole to measure its hardness.

It returned 87.0 HC, which usually points at the rubber compound focusing on durability and not so much on grip. This is just the standard, but there are always exceptions to the rule!

Right... so we must've jinxed it. When we attacked the outsole with our Dremel at 10K RPM and 3.2N, the Giannis Freak 6 struggled each and every second of the 22 long ones this test lasted.

After putting the tool aside, we realized the damage was even worse than we expected. Our tread gauge returned 1.8 mm, which is a whole 44% deeper than average.

And that's a lot, trust us! We would totally not recommend this shoe to play streetball. Its outsole will be destroyed by the outdoor court's harsh surface!

Additionally, the Giannis Freak 6 doesn't feature a thick outsole that has a lot of material to wear down before being unusable.

In fact, our caliper returned 3.6 mm, which is even slightly lower than average!

Despite its rubber not being durable, we found the traction of this Nike pair fantastic.

It features a labyrinthic thread with multiple non-deep lines that bit the floor in every direction. This pattern was the cherry on top for an already pretty stable and low-to-the-ground shoe. Why? Well, because it made us feel safe even if we went for quick backdoor cuts!

There's one last thing we want to warn you about. The Giannis Freak 6's outsole is not durable, which means that if you use this shoe a lot or you're more of a heavy player, its pattern will wear down and, consequently, the shoe will lose its grip.

The Giannis Freak 6 costs $140, which makes it step away from Giannis' budget line and its Immortality pairs. But we just can't believe Nike has gone for a higher price when this model doesn't even feature a shank for support and help when we jump. What's more, we found out it only includes 1 Zoom Air unit, and that's it! No more technologies!

In our opinion, there are cheaper and maybe even all-around better options out there. The Giannis Immortality 4 being one of them.

There are no reflective elements in the Giannis Freak 6! In our opinion, this shoe is not ready to play streetball, so it's not like we thought it would really need shiny details to enhance visibility.

With 9.5 mm of tongue padding, this shoe made the overall experience even more comfortable.

Even though we like that Nike focused the protection right where the laces rest, we also believe it could've gone for a thinner tongue. This would reduce the Giannis Freak 6's overall weight and still avoid lace bite, as almost 10 mm of padding is a lot! But we're not complaining, though.

Also, this shoe doesn't have an extra eyelet at the top. It's true that we find that detail very convenient, but the lockdown feel thanks to this Nike's overall padded structure and fully gusseted tongue didn't make us wish it had that extra hole.

We were happily welcomed by a fully gusseted tongue when we put on this Nike pair.

It hugged our feet comfortably, offering great lockdown and containment.

This shoe doesn't have any kind of heel tab.

As it features a gusseted tongue and there's a lot of padding in the heel area, some kind of lace loop would have definitely been helpful to put the shoe on.

We really like the aesthetics of the Giannis Freak 6's insole, as it includes the full name of the player.

But what we like even more is the fact that it's removable! You see, the fact that this shoe does NOT have a shank drove us crazy. We felt it was definitely lacking underfoot support during our wear tests. That's why we believe adding a supportive orthotic might help.