It must be the shoes

Episode 5 of the “Last Dance” tells us that MJ initially wanted to wear the brand with the 3 stripes when the NBA drafted him in 1984.  Sneaker heads and swoosh fans should thank Deloris Jordan for telling his son to attend a meeting with Nike officials, and the rest is a billion-dollar Air Jordan history.

Adidas that time was worn by the league’s top stars, mostly big men wearing the new Top 10 model.  The brand dominated the hardwood in the 80s, with the Pro Models and Superstars also a hit on the streets.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the brand’s first pro ball player endorser with his signature low-cut Adidas Jabbar.

I remember the title-winning PH team coached by Ron Jacobs during the 1982 Asian Basketball Confederation Junior Championships held at the Araneta Coliseum in their Top 10s. The late Alfie Almario burned the hoops in that game.  Me and my brother nagged our parents of the shoes but they were dedma because it sells for about p500, which was a steep price then.   A high-top model of the Jabbar was later released which I managed to have.

Nike was more into running and their shoes were worn by track legends Carl Lewis, Steve Prefontaine and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.  They ventured into tennis later and had the game’s original bad boy Ilie Nastase of Romania, who was at his peak, as endorser.

Adidas distributors in the US wanted to get Jordan because they knew he wanted to wear the brand.  But the company had a long standing relationship with big men and Jabbar’s success with his shoe made executives in Germany decide not to get MJ because he was too short.

Knowing that Adidas was out of the race, Converse also made their pitch.  It was the official shoes of the NBA that time and they had Julius Erving, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.  MJ thought that he can’t compete with the superstars with him also wearing the same brand.  Remember the Converse Weapon worn by Bird and Magic in the colors of the Celtics and the Lakers?  Years later, Convere bacame part of the Nike empire.

And Nike it was for MJ and the first Jordans became controversial because of league policy  that time that shoes should be at least 50% white.  The AJ1s, also known as the Air Force 1, were in black and red and the NBA fined Jordan $5,000 every time he wore the shoe because it’s against regulations.  Nike happily payed for the fine which generated unprecedented sales for the model.  The AJ1s in the Chicago colorway featured in “The Last Dance” balooned in price, and depending where you source it, can be had between $900 to $1,500.

Decades and many models later, the Air Jordans had become the world’s most popular shoes, be it on or off the court.

The Jordan 11s are believed to be the best model and are one of Nike’s best-selling shoe to date, even going up to $500 in the secondary market.  Retro Jordan 5s are also being released and they’re lining up outside stores, bahala na ang CoVid as long as they get a pair.

Adidas made up for their mistake when they got Kevin Garnett (1995) and Kobe Bryant (1996) and their sales picked up.  But for 40 million reasons, Kobe jumped to Nike in 2003.

Today, MJ takes active part in the design and production of the brand and have several pro basketball and baseball players endorsing it.  The Jordan Brand had branched out to American football, baseball and soccer.  They supply equipment to college teams like the North Carolina Tar Heels (of course), Michigan Wolverines, Florida Gators, Oklahoma Sooners and French football club Paris Saint-Germain.

Nike announced that for the end of the 2019 fiscal year, the Jordan Brand earned $3.14 billion and MJ’s cut was somewhere between $130m to $140m, installing him on the Forbes’ 2020 list of the world’s top 1,000 billionaires.  Since he retired, more Jordan Brand shoes and apparels were sold than any other signature brands of current NBA players combined.

Imagine if MJ had been wearing Adidas and where the German brand would have been today, with LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Zion Williamson in three stripes because they grew up watching His Airness play, wanting to be like Mike.  Yup, it must be the shoes.