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 From Chuck Taylors to Air Jordans, basketball shoes continue to help define a basketball player’s game – on and off the court.
By Michael J. Pallerino
The brand. The flash. The comfort. The hype. The mystique. There are many reasons basketball players choose the shoes they wear. Some might even say that basketball shoes – and the mass marketing appeal surrounding them – are as big as the game itself. Well, at least a big part of it. Ever since Chuck Taylor joined the Converse Rubber Company in 1918 with a devout passion to help spread the word on the new game he loved so much, basketball shoes have been helping define the sport and the players who wear them.
No conversation about basketball shoes would be complete without mention of Michael Jordan, the biggest marketing and selling icon of all time. Jordan, whose marketing appeal not only helped reinvent (and one would argue, create) the basketball shoe market, but also helped turn around the fortunes of a struggling shoe company named Nike.
With the running shoe phenomenon (which sparked much of its earlier sales) slowly floundering at the time, the company was looking for a way to reinvent itself. That’s when Nike executives approached a young Jordan, who was already heading full steam into the endorsement game. Nike wanted Jordan to be the face of its new basketball shoe line. But, interestingly enough, Jordan had always favored adidas and Converse (the shoe of choice for his alma mater, North Carolina).
As fate would have it, Converse already had Larry Bird and Magic Johnson on board and was not interested in offering a better deal than Nike, while adidas wasn’t interested at all then. In fact, shoe companies weren’t having much luck on the endorsement side, with few willing to risk much of their marketing budgets on product promotions. At the time, athletes were paid to wear the products, but little else. But Nike saw something special in Jordan. Their offer: a new line of shoes called “Air Jordans.”
Jordan wasn’t interested.
Nike executives convinced him to fly to Portland, where they premiered a video presentation featuring slow-motion clips of Jordan’s college career as well as ones of his high-flying Olympic moves – all to the background music of “Jump,” by the Pointer Sisters. Nike designers presented a complete line of sketches featuring AJ1 shoes, jumpsuits and sports apparel – all in black and red.
Jordan still wasn’t interested. In fact, he reportedly said, “I can’t wear that shoe, those are Devil colors.”
Even though he did not initially seem interested, as he left, he told his agent David Falk (who was a major proponent of the idea) to do the deal. The original contract included a $2.5 million, five-year deal, plus royalties and other fringe benefits.
The rest, as you know, is history.
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