The Last Dance docu-series has captivated fans with never-before-seen videos of Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls team.
But the fifth episode must’ve been hard to watch for the executives of Adidas.
During the episode, Jordan is asked: “Do you have a shoe company that you wanted to go with?”
The legendary basketball player honestly replied: “That was Adidas.”
A young Jordan is then seen saying: “I like the Lakers, I like Marques Johnson, and I like Adidas. I like Adidas shoes.” A video also shows him training in shoes with the three stripes.
In an interview in 2009, Jordan revealed: “The thing is I never wore Nike shoes until I signed a Nike contract. All through college I wore Converse and up to that point my favourite shoe was an Adidas shoe. At the time everybody was starting to try and recruit me with what shoe to wear I was pro adidas the whole time.
“Once I went through the presentation with Nike they really made a great effort of trying to have me have my input on the shoes, designing any shoes that I wanted to wear.
“But then I was very loyal, I went back to Adidas and said “look, this is the Nike contract, if you come anywhere close I’ll sign with you guys”.
“Just anywhere close to what they were putting on the table. At that time Adidas was a European brand product and they didn’t make a strong push for the States, they didn’t feel like it was worth it. In hindsight it was perfect for me because it made my decision so much easier.”
Back in 1984, Nike was known for selling shoes but wasn’t the juggernaut it is today. Adidas was No. 1 and Converse was the official shoe partner for the NBA, worn by stars such as Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson.
Jordan had worn converse through college and wanted to follow in the footsteps of other stars. But Converse didn’t think he was going to become bigger than Bird and Magic.
“Adidas was really dysfunctional by that time,” David Falk, Jordan’s agent, said. “And they had just told me, ‘look, we’d love to have Jordan, we just can’t make a shoe work at this point in time’. I wanted Michael to go with Nike because they were the big upstart.”
Falk had to persuade Jordan multiple times to consider Nike. “I couldn’t even get him to get on the damn plane to visit the campus, so I called his parents,” he said.
“My mother said, ‘you’re going to go listen. You may not like it, but you’re going to go listen’,” Jordan recalled. “She made me get on that plane and go listen.”
“Nike’s expectation was at the end of year four they hoped to sell $3million of Air Jordans,” Falk said. “In year one we sold $126 million.”
The concept made by Jordan himself, the Air Jordan, has become one of the most famous shoes in history.
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