Tinker Hatfield on Designing His Own Interpretation of an NBA Ring

With the NBA Finals beginning tonight, illustrious sneaker designer and artist Tinker Hatfield has teamed up with Michelob ULTRA to reveal yet another beautiful design from his one-of-a-kind mind.

“Well, I did last year’s bottle, which was kind of like a net draped over the actual net,” Hatfield tells SLAM over a Zoom interview. “The hoop was draped over the bottle. And I thought, well, it was just a quick read from a distance that you could, ‘Oh, that bottle’s got a net on it and oh yeah, the net of course, the cut-down the net. So only the winners get to do that. And so I’m like, well, that one worked out okay. That worked out well because it was very recognizable. And then I was just thinking as they asked me to do the same thing, that another talked about, lusted after, often photographed part of winning a championship is the actual ring that they get made. You know, Michael Jordan has six and there’s a beautiful poster of him with all his rings on his fingers. And I just think that just was a spectacular kind of photoshoot. But really, the rings are really in and of themselves kind of interesting. And obviously they don’t come along very often. So I thought, well, let’s basically print up a ring around the bottle and have the first one be the net bottle, and the second one is now the ring bottle. And [you] only get a ring when you win. I had to design a ring.”

This year’s Finals are coinciding with the NBA’s 75th anniversary season, which is prompting Tinker and Michelob to drop 75 limited-edition Championship Bottles in the winning team’s city. Those 75 winners will also get an NFT cooked up by Tinker.

The legend laughs and tells us that while it was an interesting challenge to design a ring, he’s not planning on giving up his day job at any point.

“I kind of hope that no one calls me up to design their ring for them,” Hatfield laughs. “I have enough stuff to do.”