"You're going to listen to them even if you don't like it": the day Michael Jordan's mother changed the history of Nike

In 1984, Nike was going through a low moment.

The company founded in 1964 by athletics trainer Bill Bowerman and one of his pupils, Phil Knight, failed to increase its sales and its image continued to be that of a technical clothing brand with no presence outside the sports courts.

Meanwhile, their competitors had moved ahead by adapting to the spirit of the moment.

certified shortly after .

Converse, for its part, dominated the business in the thriving NBA and had two of its biggest stars, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, as its image.

Nike needed a knockout to get out of the inconsequential and a face that gave it a recognizable personality.

The answer was in a 21-year-old boy, a basketball promise who had not yet played a game as a professional.

This is how air

begins

.

The film directed by Ben Affleck, which hits theaters this Wednesday, April 5, chronicles Nike's negotiation to get associated with Michael Jordan.

A union that, almost 40 years later, continues to be one of the most lucrative in sports fashion.

Last year, the Air Jordan brand had a turnover of 5,000 million dollars (about 4,600 million euros at current exchange rates), 11.5% of Nike's annual turnover, and Michael Jordan appears every year on the lists of the best athletes. paid despite having retired in 2003. A recent study by the Sportico portal, specialized in sports business, places him as the athlete with the highest income in history, with more than 3,000 million dollars (more than 2,671 million euros).

A historic alliance that was very close to not happening,

Story of a courtship

"It was Adidas."

This is how emphatically Michael Jordan responds in the Netflix documentary

when asked with which brand he wanted to sign his first contract as a professional athlete.

In 1984, the year he made the leap to the NBA from the University of North Carolina, the player and his agent, David Falk, began hearing proposals from sports firms.

Jordan was so sure of his potential that he demanded that his suitors have an exclusive shoe model, at a time when few players had that privilege.

Adidas, as Falk recounts in the documentary, he was not in a position to comply with that demand.

Converse, the official brand of the NBA at the time, already had other stars on its payroll and seemed unwilling to give preferential treatment to a rookie who had yet to set foot on an NBA court.

That was the crack that Nike needed to take advantage of.

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"Jordan was clear that he did not want to go with Nike," explained Sonny Vaccaro, the executive who led the negotiations with the player and who is played by Matt Damon in Air, in a recent

.

Vaccaro had discovered Jordan in the 1982 college league final, the same one in which he had scored a decisive basket.

The MVP of that match was another legendary player, James Worthy, but he had paid more attention to the charisma and aesthetic movements of that boy who stuck out his tongue when shooting to the basket.

“We wanted to convince him that this still young company was capable of doing something that he had never done before”, says Vaccaro.

But for that, Jordan had to take the brand seriously.

The first approaches with the player were not, of course, encouraging.

"Jordan didn't even know what Nike was," recalls the executive, who managed to meet him during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Vaccaro, however, was insistent and trusted his vision.

Nike had a budget of two million dollars to hire several young players, but he convinced the brand to bet everything on Jordan.

An offer much higher than those of Adidas or Converse that made the future star agree to have a meeting at the Nike offices.

At least, that was the idea.

Matt Damon and Viola Davis, respectively in the roles of executive Sonny Vaccaro and Deloris Jordan, Michael's mother, in a still from 'Air'. Amazon Studios

The day before meeting the dome of the brand, Michael Jordan decided that he did not want to go.

He didn't feel like flying out to talk about a deal he didn't believe in.

Deloris Jordan, his mother, then intervened with a conversation that changed the course of both his son and Nike.

“He told me: 'You are going to listen to them.

Even if you don't like it, you're going to listen to them”, recalls Michael Jordan himself in

.

“After the first meeting, it was clear to me that the way to reach him was through his family.

Michael only listened to his family, especially his mother, ”says Vaccaro.

Thus, forced by his mother, Michael Jordan arrived at the offices of the sports company in Oregon.

"The Nike family welcomes the Jordan family," read a band placed for the occasion.

All the stories about the meeting describe him as absent, but his family had been convinced by his proposal.

The definitive detail, which would make him the highest paid athlete of all time, was in the 5% of annual sales that the company offered the player.

“After the meeting my father told me that he had to be crazy not to accept.

It was the best agreement, ”recalls Jordan.

The decision would still take a few months to arrive, but in the fall of that year, just before making his NBA debut, the alliance was sealed.

An icon with laces

In his first game with the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan wore red and white boots that, years later, were auctioned for $1.47 million.

The model designed for him, the Air Jordan I, was not ready until the end of that year, and it began to be marketed in 1985. By then, the number 23 was already the most promising young player in the league and his charisma was beginning to show. conquer the streets

"Nike's forecasts were for $3 million in sales in the first year, but in that period they reached $126 million," explains the player's former agent, David Falk.

The Air Jordan I became a mythical model, especially its version in red and black.

Proof of this is the legend, never confirmed, that the player received a $5,000 fine each time he used them in a game for violating the NBA dress code.

It was the beginning of a strategy that Nike has not abandoned to this day: designing a new model practically every year under the Air Jordan line.

However, in 1988, the Bulls guard, insatiable on and off the field, threatened not to renew his contract with the company and go to Adidas.

At that moment, Tinker Hatfield, the company's other savior and the man responsible for making Air Jordan fever go global, entered the scene.

Michael Jordan, in his characteristic gesture with his tongue sticking out, in a 1997 game against the Utah Jazz in Chicago. VINCENT LAFORET (AFP)

“I was unaware of the gravity of the situation and how important Michael Jordan was to Nike,” Hatfield said in the documentary

.

He was one of the most innovative designers of the company, which he had joined in 1981, and for which he had created another mythical model, the Air Max I. He was commissioned to design the Air Jordan III, the shoe that had to convince the star not to leave the firm.

“We had a meeting with him to introduce them to him and it took Michael four hours to show up.

He was playing golf with other people, who were convincing him to change sides, ”Hatfield narrates.

"In the end he appeared, in a bad mood, and told us: 'Let's see, what do you have?'

The design and material innovations managed to pique his interest, but Hatfield had kept one definite factor to himself: the model was accompanied by an entire line of sportswear.

"It was like the exclamation point at the end of the sentence."

Since then, the pairing of Nike and Jordan has become a triumvirate, with Hatfield as the driving force in the shadows.

"Jordan had the ability to get people's attention beyond the world of sports, and Tinker found a way to translate that character and turn it into sneakers," explains DJ and sneaker collector Bobbito Garcia in the aforementioned documentary.

“With the Air Jordan III, IV and V, the brand became something huge.”

“I wanted basketball shoes that you could wear to a game and, the same day, put on a tuxedo,” Jordan said.

The idea worked perfectly: the rise of urban fashion is incomprehensible without Air Jordan and its ability to turn sporting goods into objects that can easily be worn on the street.

A model change

"Jordan opened the door to a multi-billion dollar industry for athletes," Vaccaro recently explained.

Indeed, and despite not being the first athlete to be the image of a brand, a new model was created with him.

On the one hand, sportswear transcended the field for which he was born and became a fundamental part of urban fashion.

On the other, a machinery for the incessant production of shoes and clothing created around different sports figures was activated.

This industry has grown to such an extent that, in some cases, these agreements provide athletes with figures higher than the salaries they receive for practicing their sport.

An example is that of the also basketball player Zion Williamson,

Today, there is no NBA star who does not have his own line of shoes, which is renewed with a new model almost every year.

The withdrawal or even the death of the player, as in the case of Kobe Bryant, does not prevent the machinery from continuing to supply the sneaker acolytes with novelties

a whole subculture that cannot be understood without the rise of Air Jordan.

A snowball that, unexpectedly, began with a mother's scolding.

For that reason,

gives a fundamental role to Deloris Jordan, played by Viola Davis, at the request of Michael Jordan himself.

"I was talking to him and I asked him to tell me stories about his father, and he started telling me about his mother, who wasn't even in the script," Ben Affleck explained in an interview with

"That's when I understood what the movie had to be about."

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