The Nike Gamble That Built Air Jordan

On this episode of Our American Stories, the 1984 NBA Draft brought Michael Jordan to Chicago and led Nike into a gamble that would define its future. Nike committed to a signature shoe built around a rookie and released a design that drew immediate scrutiny from league officials. But the fines that followed became part of the story rather than the end of it.

As Jordan’s career began to climb, so did the visibility of the Air Jordan line. Nicholas Smith, the author of Kicks, revisits the early days of the Nike and Michael Jordan partnership and the circumstances that led to one of the most recognizable brands in sports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
If you were to think of the most popular sneakers
in sports, the name that comes to mind is Nike.
But this brand wasn't always a top choice for athletes.
In fact, in the nineteen seventies and eighties, Nike was
an underdog compared to other big brands like Adidas and Pluma.

(00:33):
Up next, Nicholas Smith, author of Kicks, The Great American
Story of Sneakers, brings us the story of how Nike
took a chance on a college student to build their brand.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Take it away, Nick, What makes Cinderella special at the ball?
It's that glass slipper. What makes Dorothy return back from
Oz to Kansas?

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Cap your heels together three times and.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Think to yourself, there's no place like whom. It's the
red ruby slippers. What makes Michael Jordan fly through the air?
It's that Nike air Jordan. So they were selling an
idea that had been with our culture for a very
long time, that shoes can transform you into something else.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Nike at the time had some success in the running
shoe market and was trying to move into other sports.
Of course, they were competing with the converses and with
the adidases and with the pumas in the world that
kind of controlled that market. Nanaki had made some inroads
in getting college basketball players to wear their shoes, but
by the time those players turned the pros, they went

(01:48):
to one of the bigger brands. So they thought, okay, well,
we need to change your bar strategy. It's the early eighties,
it's nineteen eighty four. Let's look at the draft and
kind of pick the best players that we think and
then we can kind of approach them for their their
own shoes, and then you know that that will be
our big success story. Some of the Nike executives said, okay, well,
you know, let's let's not look for let's let's look

(02:10):
at one and that one basketball player that they saw
was Michael Jordan. Now we all know the success that
Michael Jordan had, but at the time he was, you know,
a rookie who was an unknown quantity, very very good,
but you know, it wasn't clear if it would pan
out or not. So they decided to take a gamble
and make not only a shoe the air Jordan's shoe

(02:34):
after him, but also a line of different products clothing,
and after a couple of years, the Air Jordan shoe
became you know, very very big and very very famous
because Jordan started to become a better, better player. Now,
of course, other brands started to become interested in Jordan,
and Jordan was sure if he was going to, you know,
stay with Nike or move to Adidas or Converse, which

(02:57):
he also liked. And Nike said, oh, we're going to
have to, you know, change up our strategy here. We're
going to have to get a new shoe designer to
design a third version of this Air Jordan's shoe. We're
going to have to have a brand new marketing campaign
to go with this. And two of the Nike executives
just happened upon a first time director named Spike Lee,

(03:18):
who made a very inventive first movie, and they thought, okay, well,
let's let's try to get this guy in to write
and direct some commercials with Jordan. And these commercials ended
up being a very pivotal moment for Nike because they
kind of solidified not just the myth of Jordan the player,
but the myth of the shoe itself. They were in

(03:40):
black and white. They had you know, a very young
Michael Jordan there, and they also had Spike Lee in
his character that he played in his first movie, Mars Blackman,
this kind of geeky, nerdy, you know, basketball obsessed guy
who you know, was just enamored and in love with Jordan,
even though he loved the New York knicksy you know,
saw that Jordan was still, you know, the best player
around in those days. So the commercials were kind of

(04:02):
a you know, a straight man and a joking man
going back and forth. Jordan played the you know, I'm
just going to say how it is, and Mars Blockman
was kind of the the goofball there. So one of
the first commercials, you know, Spike Lee and his characters,
he's trying to get Jordan to say, you know, what
is it that makes you so great?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yo, Mars Blackman, here with my main man, Michael Jordan. You, Mike,
what makes you the best player in the universe?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is it vicious stunts? No Mars.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Is it a haircut, no Mars. Is it the shoes?
No man? Is it an extra long shorts? No Mars.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Is the shoes right, It's the shoes Michael, the shoes
make you great, and you're like, no, No, it's not
the shoes. But of course the point of the commercial
is the shoes. They want you to buy the shoes
that Jordan wears, the same shoes that this professional player
that's so electric that everyone's talking about. You can have
the very same thing that he's wearing on the court.

(04:58):
Is it the short sucks? No, Mark, Money's got to
be the shoe. Shoe you you boo? Sure is not
the shoes?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Sure, Mark, what about the shoes? Nor?

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Money's got to be the shoes. And this is kind
of a very unique way to approach that marketing in
a way that other brands had kind of touched on
but hadn't really nailed it in the same way that
Nike in that marketing was nailing it. And whether this
was conscious at the time or not, they were tapping
into a very old idea, the idea of a magic shoe.

(05:31):
And when players like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan
became really big, you wanted to emulate them as much
as possible. And it wasn't just on the basketball court,
it was you know, in the school yard, walking down
the street, you know, in your spare time, you wanted
to have that association there with somebody famous. I mean,
it's kind of the oldest idea now is you know

(05:53):
what we like is because we saw it on somebody
else that we want to emulate. You know, people daring
a certain sneaker want to kind of capture that cool
that whoever is having that sneaker has. Now, in those days,
of course it's say it's an athlete, because you know,
athletes were sneakers. But over time it became musicians, it

(06:14):
became celebrities. You would start to find them on TV
or in the movies or other sorts of things. So,
of course, in the nineteen seventies, Charlie's Angels is a
is a big, big show, and Farah Faucet is probably
the biggest star on that show. Well, in one episode,
she's i think, escaping from a bad guy on a
skateboard and she's wearing a pair of white Nike sneakers,

(06:35):
same pair incidentally that Forrest Gump war in the movie
To Run across America. Well, of course, you know, people
watching this episode, are people seeing the posters or anything
of Farah Fawcet in those sneakers? Immediately wanted a pair
because of that connection there to you know, a very
famous celebrity. And after a while, more and more brands
started to sponsor more and more non athletes. And you know,

(06:57):
this is what leads us to the world of today
where if Rihanna has a sneaker deal, you're not looking
at it weird, like, oh, well, she's not an athlete.
You're like, oh, yeah, of course she's Rihanna. Of course
you would have her own sneaker line.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
And a terrific job by Madison Derek Out on the
production in storytelling and a special thanks to author Nicholas Smith.
A terrific business, culture, sports and history story all wrapped
into one, the story of Air Jordan. Here on our
American Stories leihavib Here, as we approach our nation's two

(07:32):
hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like to remind you that
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(07:55):
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