Michael Jordan
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This Nike trip proposed by Vaccaro was scheduled to occur right before training camp opened, so he’d have to rush back to Chicago. The last thing Jordan wanted to do was jam up his schedule with any sort of public silliness. Playing in an exhibition game for US troops held a certain appeal, although he preferred to keep such events very low-key. Mostly, he thought he could get in a visit with older brother Ronnie, and that made the trip worthwhile.
An even more questionable item on the itinerary was Jordan’s commitment to play for both sides in an all-star game that opened the Spanish league season. It made absolutely no sense to interject Jordan into the Spanish league’s big moment, except for the chance to broadcast America’s brightest star in action to much of the Spanish-speaking world.
The whole thing felt strange. Plus, wartime travel presented huge security issues. Only after Vaccaro commandeered a Nike corporate jet and made detailed security plans at each stop did Jordan warm to the idea.
“It was a public relations tour,” Vaccaro explained. “It was the first one Nike ever did like this. It was huge. Michael did the first of anything we ever did and I went with him.”
This junket would become the prototype tour for a generation of American pro basketball stars promoting shoes over the ensuing two decades. But at the time, there was another, darker reason for the hastily planned escape. That summer Nike had gotten embroiled in an ugly public relations spat with Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH. Rev. Tyrone Crider, one of Jackson’s young lieutenants, had taken over as PUSH executive director and targeted the shoe industry’s lack of involvement in the African American community. Crider’s complaint with Nike was that the Oregon company had no black board members, no black vice presidents, and a scarcity of black department heads. Nike had deals with other black endorsers beyond Jordan, and Crider acknowledged as much. But the PUSH leader said that he was taking on Nike because in a few short years it had become the industry leader.
The company and PUSH had begun discussions that summer, but they ended abruptly when PUSH demanded to see Nike’s books and Nike countered with its own demand to peek inside PUSH’s finances. Crider responded by ordering a boycott of Nike products by African Americans. “Don’t buy Nike. Don’t wear Nike,” he said in announcing the campaign on August 12. Some observers suggested that Crider had miscalculated in taking on Nike, that PUSH would surely lose. Still, the company wanted no showdown with PUSH and made offers to rectify any shortage of African Americans in its power structure. This effort would eventually boost Jordan’s own position with the company and help provide impetus for the creation of the Jordan Brand. But in the interim, the star was in danger of being drawn into a nasty dispute, with headlines in major papers across the country. The last thing Nike wanted was to see Air Jordan on TV, being hit with questions about the conflict.
On August 15, Jordan released a statement saying that all of corporate America needed to provide opportunities but that PUSH’s targeting of Nike was out of bounds. “It is unfair to single out Nike just because they are on top,” his statement read.
After releasing his comments, he departed quickly for Europe. Just as Sonny Vaccaro had once come up with an idea to put Jordan in the spotlight, he had now come up with something that would take him out of it. Nike would make changes, and Crider would leave PUSH after the boycott fizzled out in early 1991 when it became clear that African American buyers were reluctant to stop buying the shoes.
Still, the incident served notice to Jordan that such highly charged issues could and would create headaches regarding his business interests. The 1990s would bring allegations by human rights organizations that Nike was employing hundreds of sweatshops worldwide in the manufacturing of its products, an issue that would quickly ensnare Jordan in his growing roles with the company.
Jordan had also found himself caught in another huge issue that summer of 1990 when he was asked, through his mother, to endorse the campaign of Harvey Gantt, an African American Democrat who was trying to pry the hardline conservative Jesse Helms out of his US Senate seat representing North Carolina. It was a close, racially charged campaign, made famous by Helms’s “Hands” political ad that showed a white man losing his job to a minority because of unfair racial quotas. The ad, written by Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, played on white resentment. When asked to get involved in the campaign, Jordan had famously told Gantt’s people that he couldn’t because “Republicans buy shoes, too.”
Politics had not been the path to prosperity for his grandfather Edward Peoples, nor for generations of black North Carolinians, and it wasn’t a priority for Deloris Jordan or her son in 1990. The response angered many and yet pleased many others. Lacy Banks and others in Chicago shook their heads. It was not, Banks would note years later, the kind of answer that Muhammad Ali would have chosen. The refusal to help Gantt, who lost the race, incensed social activist and former NFL star Jim Brown, who said of Jordan, “He’s more interested in his image for shoe deals than he is in helping his own people.”
At the other end of the spectrum were people like Kenny Gattison, who had played against Jordan since high school. He said that the comment made possible Jordan’s full crossover as a product endorser, because he stayed free of political controversy. “That’s what made him an icon,” Gattison offered, “because he never uttered a word and never gave people a reason to bash him.”
Looking back in 2008, Michael Wilbon observed in his Washington Post column, “It seemed to officially usher in a period in which athletes made a conscious choice of commerce over politics. Neutrality offended fewer people. African American athletes, with Jordan leading the way, appealed commercially for the first time to the mainstream.” (Jordan would contribute to Gantt’s second unsuccessful run at Helms and later gave money to Democrat presidential contender Bill Bradley. Jordan even threw a very public fundraiser for Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign.)
Still, the 1990 election brought a watershed moment in Jordan’s public image. ESPN’s J. A. Adande recalled the comment as a demarcation for many of his friends in their worship of His Airness. “I had friends that wanted absolutely nothing to do with Michael Jordan because of that,” Adande said, “because they thought he was derelict in his social duties. They couldn’t get over that. They couldn’t enjoy Jordan the player because they really didn’t have any respect for Jordan the person.” Adande himself couldn’t fathom why Jordan wouldn’t want to take on a known racist. Pushed on the issue by GQ magazine several years later, Jordan explained that at age twenty-seven, he was focused on building his basketball career, not on politics.
“I later understood that, but when I was younger I agreed with Jim Brown,” longtime NBA journalist David Aldridge recalled. “I was like, ‘Come on, Michael! You can take a stand on this. You’re Michael Jordan! What’re they gonna do to you?’… I was horrified. Literally, I was like, ‘C’mon Michael! You can’t be that venal! Or that crass! It can’t always be about you! It’s gotta be about something bigger than you, because our whole life as black people, it’s always been about something bigger than us. That’s why you do the things that you do, because there’s people who were ahead of you that made it possible for you to do that.’ I thought, ‘How could Michael Jordan not take a stand on this, or how could he not support Harvey Gantt?’ I agreed with a lot of the people that took him to task for that.”
The longtime NBA reporter said the moment was a pivot point. Endorsing Gantt might well have sent Jordan off in another direction, in which he could have been appreciated as someone who stood up for social justice, instead of standing up for self-interest.
“I remember him saying one time, ‘I’m not a politician,’ ” Lacy Banks recalled in 2011. “Mike had a weakness in that. He never really aggressively identified with the mainstream causes.”
Given his discomfort over such public confrontations, it made sense that Jordan decided to get away with Sonny Vaccaro to Europe that August, just as things were heating up.
Which was how they ended up in the funky old bathroom on the Army base in Germany. With no marketing woes to worry about, Germany would prove to be the emotional part of the journey, with the troops gathered and still so many unknowns about the conflict. Plus his brother Ronnie would be there.
“Michael judged the dunk contest and played on an Army-based team,” Vaccaro recalled. “It was all Nike-related sponsors. He played against himself for the soldiers in Germany. He played in the game in a small gym, maybe two thousand soldiers are there. The game plan was he was going to play five or ten minutes for team A, then he’d play five or ten minutes for team B. Then we’d sneak out the back door to the limo ’cause the crowds were all there and the media and you couldn’t get in this little gym.”
Jordan and Vaccaro sought refuge in the gym’s ancient restroom. There was a bench and old-style open urinals, a long metal trough that stank, hardly the kind of accommodations that were anticipated when Vaccaro sold the idea of a grand European marketing junket. Jordan never said a word about the conditions.
“I closed the door right before the start of the game,” Vaccaro recalled. “We’re in there just the two of us. I go to the bathroom, and he’s bouncing the ball. I had closed the door and then someone comes and says it’s time to start the game. I said, ‘Let’s go Michael.’ He said, ‘No, leave me alone for another minute.’ ” Vaccaro studied Jordan a moment before realizing what was happening.
“That sucker was getting ready to play this game. Why am I saying this? He was bouncing the ball getting ready for the game. That’s who he is. He was going to play his best no matter what the hell the atmosphere or the circumstances were. He was in a pissy old urinal in goddamned Germany and he’s getting ready to play the game like it’s UNC against Georgetown in the Superdome. That shows you the mentality he’s carried throughout his whole life.”
Jordan tore into that first half, driving his team to a lead. In this game, his opponents were Americans, and it was easier to read them on the floor. He still took those early moments to gauge what he faced, but from there he attacked in fierce Jordan fashion, producing steals in head-spinning numbers, slashing to the rim, toying with three-pointers, and when the action slowed, posting up just to test the people around him.
“On the court he’s a bastard,” Sonny Vaccaro remembered thinking.
Jordan may not have known what to do with the politics of protest, but he certainly had no equivocation about competing. The situation was “love of the game” personified. Instead of playing limited minutes each half, Jordan consumed the entire game. “He plays for team A the first half for twenty minutes,” Vaccaro recalled. “Then halftime, he changes his jersey and plays for team B.”
The halftime score, if Vaccaro remembered correctly, “was 40 to 25 for Michael’s team. Now he changes his jersey and he plays for the other team.”
The players he had just humbled now became his teammates, just as if he was back in a Bulls practice where Doug Collins had decided to do a switcheroo. So Jordan began searching through his new roster, trying to find out who would stand up and who wouldn’t.
“You can guess the story,” Vaccaro said. “End of the game it was like 82 to 80. Michael beat himself. He played all forty minutes of the game with the soldiers.”
The real marketing segment of the trip came in Barcelona, where preparations for the 1992 Olympics were under way. Jordan made highly publicized visits to the offices of Nike, to the Olympic staff, even to Associated Club Basketball, the Spanish league offices. “They wanted Michael to go to Barcelona and he actually put a shovel in the ground for the new stadium they were building for the 1992 Olympics,” Vaccaro explained. “He did one press conference in Madrid and another in Barcelona. He was the jury in a slam dunk contest at the Spanish all-star game put on by Nike for young people.”
And once again he played himself, this time with the Spanish pros. Jordan took a little longer to read his European opponents, trying to sense their different game. It helped that he had the Olympic experience from 1984. He floated a few jumpers, got his bearings, and then went to work, all to the delight of the packed arena in Barcelona.
The Spanish crowds cheered Jordan’s every move, leaving fans and media alike to declare that the “god of the basketball” had descended into their presence. Jordan’s grand reception would help drive something akin to a coronation in Barcelona two years later.
“It promoted Nike on a grand scale,” Vaccaro said of his brainchild. “Now Michael was an icon.”
The trip marked a subtler but perhaps larger personal transformation for Jordan, beginning with the fact that he had listened, Vaccaro explained. So much of what had been done before had rested on Deloris Jordan’s guidance. But Vaccaro saw the first real emergence of the business and marketing force that Jordan was becoming. He was leaving behind the mind-set of a petulant young prince and was taking ownership of the brand, doing what was necessary to make it grow. He was applying his work ethic and competitive spirit and maturity to something beyond basketball. Not that Jordan hadn’t always tended to his responsibilities, but now it was as if the adolescent who had vowed to never have a job had finally gotten one.
Slam Dunk
During a whirlwind spin through the City of Light, taking in the Seine and Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, Jordan had so much fun he told a friend that seeing the sights got him to thinking about co-owning a team in Europe and playing there after he retired from the NBA.
The change was obvious, Vaccaro said. “For much of my time with him, during those first years in the NBA, he still was a young kid feeling his oats, partying, girlfriends, and all that stuff before he and Juanita got married. I was part of that whole thing. I saw it. Now he’s maturing. He now knows what he has. He was assuming responsibility with his empire off the court with Nike. He was becoming a part owner now.”
His next contract would acknowledge what Phil Knight already begrudgingly knew, that the power of Michael Jordan had evolved into a full equity partnership with Nike. And PUSH had been there to guide the process along. “His next contract would be the Jordan Brand,” Vaccaro said.
Dee Brown got a taste of the new Jordan when the Celtics’ rookie guard won the Slam Dunk Contest at the 1991 NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte. The only problem was, he felt a lot like the old Jordan. The NBA had tried to persuade him to enter the contest in his native Carolina, but Jordan had declined, figuring he had nothing to gain and much to lose.
But when he arrived in Charlotte, his competitive juices started flowing as he watched Brown win the Slam Dunk Contest with a soaring, blindfolded slam. What really mattered were the shoes on Brown’s feet, Reebok’s trendy Pumps. Not long after the contest ended that Friday night, Brown found himself in a back tunnel waiting for another event to start. And suddenly, there was Jordan.
“It was weird,” Brown recalled. “I was a rookie and I had just won a contest maybe two hours before. It was just me and Michael and security. And I’m sitting there, so he comes up to me and says, ‘Good job, young fella. You did a really good job.’ Then he kind of said, ‘You know I got to go at you more now.’ ” Brown was taken aback by the comment and more than a little intimidated. “Why?” he asked. “Michael goes, ‘You know you’ve started a shoe war.’ I go, ‘What does that mean?’ I’m oblivious. This is Michael Jordan. I’m twenty-one years old, just won a dunk contest. I didn’t comprehend what he said. He could have told me that my face is falling off, I would have been like, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Later, Brown began to wonder, how did Jordan even know wh
ere he was? Had the star made a point to seek him out to put him on notice? The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Jordan had done just that.
“I started figuring it out,” Brown said. “You hear all the stories about Michael and how competitive he is. He already had it in his mind that what I did with that pump-up shoe, that what it was going to be was a competition between his shoe and that shoe. Forget about basketball, it went to the competition of ‘Now I got to kick your butt in something else. I know you can’t guard me. I’m the best player in the world. But just because you did that little Reebok thing, now I got to step my game up on the shoe business.’ ”
In a few short months, Jordan had stepped into a new identity that very few were aware of at the time. He was the player as shoe executive. As Vaccaro pointed out, Jordan was becoming far more accomplished in this business role than the public realized or understood.
“The Reebok Pump kind of blew up a little bit for a time there,” Brown said with a laugh in a 2012 interview, adding that soon enough, however, the issue was settled decisively. “Obviously Michael stepped the shoe game up. That tells you what kind of competition it turned out to be. Everybody is wearing Jordans now.”
The Wages of Change
The twenty-seven-year-old man with the unquenchable appetites and boundless energy finally returned Phil Jackson’s phone calls early that fall of 1990 as training camp was set to open. The coach had been calling through much of the off-season, but Jordan had been off, into everything, it seemed. At one point that summer, he had found time to play in a charity golf tournament in Philadelphia, with Charles Barkley as his caddie. The two hit it off immediately. Chuck was immensely talented, and his sense of humor made it so much easier for Jordan to deal with all the bullshit that was now piling up around him. Somehow Barkley always kept him chuckling. Soon enough he had stitched into his life a running phone conversation with Sir Charles. Jordan had thought he could talk some shit, but Barkley? Jordan had to laugh when the Alabama fat boy told him he would be taking the league scoring title away from him for the upcoming season.