Lionel Messi brought luck to Michael Jordan? It seems disconnected, yes, between football and basketball, but that’s the reality. Messi’s move to his new team, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) has made the Air Jordan brand breathe again after being beaten hard by the pandemic that is still circling the earth.
Yes, as is known, the PSG jersey has been affixed to the Air Jordan brand since the 2019/2020 season, and now in a week the jersey with the number 30 back has made a profit of 2 trillion rupiah and Air Jordan has received 5% of it.
Before getting involved in the clothing empire, Air Jordan started its business in a line of shoes, especially basketball, in which the name Michael Jordan shone brightly. In the past, before Air Jordan became the de facto shoe for NBA basketball players, Converse All Stars were the official shoe.
Charles “Chuck” Hollis Taylor (1923) was the first basketball player to wear the flat-soled Converse All Stars brand and was also the first endorser of signed shoes. Actually Converse, the shoes that Michael Jordan wore when he played at the University of North Carolina wanted to endorse them, but they already had Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
Back to Air Jordan, this label is a subsidiary of Nike and Michael Jordan is a basketball player it endorses. Jordan is lucky because he has a smart and visionary agent named David Falk. Yes, it was thanks to Falk that Jordan got a 5-year contract with a value of $ 2.5 million, far greater than the value of the best player at that time, who only pocketed $ 100 thousand, even though at that time he was still a rookie from the University of North Carolina.
And surprisingly, the basketball player who has won 6 times in 15 seasons with his Chicago Bulls team turned down this tempting offer because he hoped to partner with his favorite brand, Adidas.
Adidas is the shoe brand worn by the Los Angeles Lakers star, Marques Johnson whom MJ really admires, while Nike is just a small shoe company. But all these doubts were countered by his father who said that MJ was stupid if he refused such a big offer. Michael Jordan’s parents were right, now Air Jordan is a multi-billion dollar company engaged in the lines of basketball shoes, athletics, casual and clothing.
To kick off the deal, David Falk demanded that Nike have the number 23 when he played for the Chicago Bulls have his own line of shoes with an annual release schedule of one shoe model per year. However, in fact, Falk’s idea was opposed by the NBA, which has its own rules.
At that time, the NBA liked Converse shoes because they were all white and only had jersey color accents from their respective teams. This aims to “level the players and promote a team atmosphere” for the sake of their franchise business. But this only compresses the individual players because there are no visible players that stand out.
The good news is, Michael Jordan is there to break it all. As an NBA All Star he has fought extensively for player rights in the NBA, a league that has a history of disparaging and silencing its athletes. The birth of the Air Jordan 1 line in the iconic black and red colors and white pair of shoes he wore to a pre-season game against the New York Knicks, at Madison Square Garden in 1985 was a catalyst for change in the NBA.
The name Air Jordan (AJ) itself comes from Falk’s idea of combining Nike’s air-tech soles with the slam dunk-style flying game that Jordan does a lot in every basketball game. However, AJ got into trouble when NBA commissioner David Stern’s eyes flashed on the shoes and ended with a warning letter containing a ban on wearing AJ’s shoes on the grounds that they did not comply with the rules and procedures.
He warned that Jordan’s AJ shoes collided with his team-mates and they were banned from playing. However, this actually did not stop the relationship between the duo players and the corporation. Over the years, Nike capitalized on the scandal by featuring ads for the AJ1 until finally re-releasing the shoe in a “forbidden” edition cover. All of this was an attempt to boost Michael Jordan’s self-image as a singles athlete, a man who made his own rules.
As a result of this case, Michael Jordan was fined in the 1985 season of $ 5 thousand for every game when he wore these shoes and Nike paid him happily. Imagine, in the first year of sales, AJ has brought in coffers of $ 126 million, much higher than Nike’s expectations, which expect revenue of $ 3 million in its fourth year.
AJ1 became even more popular when MJ wore it during the contests of NBA’s annual slam dunk in 1985. The AJ2 released in November 1986 was the first to feature the brand’s iconic “Jumpman” logo. Now the Jumpman logo is not only on the basketball court but has spread to other sports fields including football.
After his last game for the NBA in 2003, Michael Jordan earned $130 million from Air Jordan endorsements, four times more than LeBron James. Shoes that are unrivaled in quality, craftsmanship, materials, innovation, performance and style this doesn’t only play in the realm of basketball but has become part of the world’s sneakers trend even today.
Sneakerheads don’t hesitate to queue to get their hands on the newest Air Jordan. AJ’s shoes have also become a highly sought-after item, even though it is at least related to criminal practices in the form of assault, robbery, and even murder.
Yes, a 15-year-old high school student named Michael Eugene Thomas was strangled by his friend in 1989, because of AJ. A school principal in Detroit made a ban on clothing, including AJ’s sneakers, because it caused acts of violence in the form of beatings, assaults, robberies, and shootings. In 2005, two men in Chicago killed a 17-year-old for a pair of Air Jordan shoes. In 2012, in New Jersey, two teenagers were robbed and shot as soon as they got an Air Jordan 11.
But whatever happens, Air Jordan continues to evolve by releasing a numbered edition every year and now it has entered number 36 which is intended for a basketball player from Slovenia, Luka Doncic. Apart from Doncic, Jayson Tatum and Rui Hachimura also have this exclusive player edition from Jordan 36.
Air Jordan basketball shoes or sneakers are the perfect combination of quality products, marketing, and athlete endorsements that have become a status symbol for youth in the 80s and 90s and are still street style today. Jordan managed to make sneakers a part of pop culture and the global fashion industry.
ASL
