THAT’S HOW MICHAEL THINKS.
TINKER HATFIELD The inspiration for the design of the VII was tribalism, African art influenced by an Afropop Worldwide poster. I was walking down the street, thinking about the next shoe when I came by a little record store near my house. In the window was this Afropop poster. The guy in the drawing was playing a guitar shaped like Africa, and he looked like he was moving. It was tribal and exciting. I remembered a previous conversation with Michael when he talked about wanting the shoes to stay young and interesting, while remaining sophisticated. Now, young can go juvenile and become silly, or it can be vibrant and young in spirit, but still sophisticated in design.
I went right inside the store. The owner didn’t want to sell me the poster because he was advertising a radio show and the Afropop music. I told him I worked on design for Michael Jordan, and that I was really inspired by the poster in my quest to come up with some new ideas for the next Air Jordan shoe. Once he heard that, he said, “I’ll let you have it for $15.” After I designed the shoe and they heard a little bit about the story, I was asked to be on Afropop Worldwide’s board of directors. They produce music and help young people in Africa find musical opportunities.
I CAN’T SAY ENOUGH ABOUT TINKER AND WHAT HE HAS MEANT TO THE JORDAN BRAND.
I love him to death, and his creative talent speaks for itself. We became a team. He understood exactly what I wanted in the shoes because he understood what was going on in my life at any given time. He had been a world-class athlete himself, so he knew it was about more than just looking at the numbers or responding to what the critics were saying.
I TRUST TINKER.
I THINK IN PREVIOUS YEARS, I WAS TRYING NOT TO BE INFLUENCED BY THINGS YOU MIGHT CONSIDER TO BE RACIAL OR CULTURAL ISSUES.
But the lines on the outsole design were directly inspired by Western African tribal patterns, and the vibrancy of the poster.
MOM If you are not familiar with another environment, you can get boxed into what other people say or think about that environment. Michael wanted to be an Olympian for so many years. He always talked about wanting to play in the Olympics. When the time came in 1984, Bobby Knight was the coach.
Michael said, “They say Bobby Knight curses and he’s mean,” I asked Michael who said that about Bobby Knight. “Well, that’s what everybody says.” What do you say? Michael said he didn’t know the man. So how can you judge him? You are using another person’s judgment. I always told Michael, “Get to know people yourself before you judge them.”
Mr. Jordan and I drove to Bloomington to see Michael during those practices before the Olympics. I said, “Michael, tell me about Mr. Knight.” Michael said, “Momma, he’s fine. I like him. Some of his words aren’t the best, but I like him.”
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics was one the best times in my life. You’re talking about the greatest players in the world, guys who’d had every story written about how great they were, all the things they could do and had done on the basketball court.
All I thought about was, “I have to see all this for myself. I want to see what these guys are all about.” That was my motivation for going to the Olympic Games in 1992. I had won a gold medal in 1984; we were coming off back-to-back titles; and I was exhausted with all the business commitments. But I had to see these guys for myself. I’d played against them, but I wanted to see how they practiced. I wanted to see if Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, David Robinson and the rest of them were competitive.
The best part of the whole thing turned out to be the practices. All we did was line up and play. We were all stars out there. We didn’t need anybody to stand above everybody else. We’d been playing ball all our lives. We knew who we were. Chuck Daly? He’d just say, “Come on, let’s get a hard hour or two in. Let’s get loose.” That’s all he did. He didn’t coach. He didn’t call fouls. He just threw the ball out there. You had more people watching those practices, from Rod Thorn to David Stern, local media, foreign media.
The games were competitive as hell. It was up and down the court. We had 12 players, but John Stockton had broken his leg. Christian Laettner was on the team, but he was still in college, and no one would let him in the games. We played five-on-five. If Magic got off to a good start, or anyone else, the talking would start: “This is what’s going to happen next year.”
These were the teams: Me and Scottie Rippen, Chris Mullin, Larry Bird and Patrick Ewing. That was our five. They had Magic, Drexler, Malone, Charles Barkley and Robinson. We whipped their ass every day.
In Monte Carlo, we got into the most heated match of the entire time. Magic was telling us how great the Lakers were and how Showtime was the best basketball. Me and Rippen are listening on the way to practice, and we say, “OK, we’re going to show you what these new kids are all about.” Larry’s back was hurting, so all he wanted was to get a good run in.
Me and Magic talked trash back and forth all day. I was guarding him, and I’m saying, “You don’t have Kareem now. You got to do it all yourself.” At the other end, he was guarding me, and if I blew by him, I’d be trash-talking: “You don’t have Michael Cooper out here now. This isn’t your old team.” We beat them so bad that when the game was over, Magic said, “We ain’t leaving. We got to keep playing.”
Scottie and I looked at Bird, and we said, “We’re ready to go.” Magic said, “Why you ready to go?” And we said, “Because there isn’t any competition here.” Then Pip, who was the biggest instigator, started singing, “Sometimes I dream …”
Magic didn’t speak to us for two days.
TINKER HATFIELD I’ve been around a whole lot of world-class athletes. A lot of people have a game face, or a certain way of getting prepared for a game. Michael is one of the very few who never really got uptight before the game. He never really had to go into what I call lockdown. A lot of athletes, they get edgy. They don’t want to talk to anybody. Boxers or football players get themselves all worked up. He never did any of that.
The greatest example for me was on a trip to a game one night in Chicago. Howard is sitting in the front seat, I’m in the back, and Michael is driving to Chicago Stadium. It was Game 3 of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Knicks. Chicago had lost the first two games in New York, so the Bulls were coming back home for a real big game.
Michael wasn’t the least bit worried about the possibility of going down 3-0. We get in the car, Howard’s chitchatting a little bit, no big deal.
THEN MICHAEL DOES HIS FAMOUS DETOUR, WHERE HE GOES THROUGH THIS BAD NEIGHBORHOOD AND STOPS TO TALK TO FOUR KIDS ON THE STREET CORNER.
Then we drive to the Stadium. Michael has an abscess on his toe. One of the biggest games he’s ever played in, and his toe is just killing him. He hated to have people look at his feet. This doctor is working on his toe, which was infected. The doctor lances the toe, and butterflies it together. The doctor’s doing this, and Michael’s talking the whole time.
While all this is going on, somebody walks in and gives him this big fat envelope. Inside the envelope is a stack of about 40 tickets for that night’s game. He has the tickets, and he has a list of names. Then somebody brings in another 15 envelopes. He starts looking at the list of names, and takes the tickets. Looking at the seat and section numbers, he basically matches up the names with seats. Now it’s down to less than two hours before the game. He’s taking the time, after all the other stuff he had done, to actually concern himself with who was sitting where in the arena. And he probably had to buy all the tickets.
I’M JUST TOTALLY FLABBERGASTED BECAUSE I HAD NEVER SEEN A CELEBRITY OR AN ATHLETE BE SO NONCHALANT ABOUT WHAT WAS AHEAD, AND AT THE SAME TIME SO CONCERNED ABOUT OTHERS RIGHT BEFORE IT ALL STARTED.
I asked him about that later. “So how come you were the one picking out the seats? You could have had somebody else do that for you.” He said, “I always want to pick out the seats because if somebody has a problem with them, I want them to know they can come to me, and I’ll tell them why they g
ot the seat they did.” This is right before a game that, if they lose they probably don’t go on to play for the third championship. And that was the title he really wanted. So that game was huge.
To me, that was a clear indication that this guy is so fine-tuned as an athlete, and he had such a strong sense of what he could do and how he could do it, that he didn’t have to get freaked out before the game. He didn’t have to go into lockdown, or sit in a dark room by himself. He’s doing the tickets, talking to people, giving a high five to kid in a wheelchair by the court, laughing, talking.
TIPOFF. BOOM! HE’S A VICIOUS COMPETITOR.
He could just flip the switch. That’s very, very rare. I don’t think there has ever been anyone like that. It may exist somewhere, but I haven’t seen it. I’ve been around sports my whole life, and I have never seen anything like that.
TINKER HATFIELD I had been discussing the idea of eliminating the swoosh from Michael’s shoes for a couple years. You can only imagine what kind of resistance I got from the marketing people at Nike Basketball. They basically told me I had to be kidding. It was a real struggle. I’m talking about knockdown-dragout arguments with people. I tried to eliminate the swoosh on the Jordan VI because I knew early on Michael was going to be strong enough in the marketplace to stand on his own.
By the time we started on the Jordan VII, Michael didn’t need the swoosh. That’s why the Jumpman became so big on the sixth shoe. I was strategically making the Jumpman more important.
Although people thought I was wrong, I was able to make it happen. In the end, I most accurately pointed out that the decision lay between MJ and myself. We had been making those decisions all along, and that was my defense. MJ wants to do it; I want to do it. Who wants to step in and battle with both of us?
IT WAS A BIT LIKE POKER, WHERE PEOPLE STARTED TO SAY, “WELL, I’M OUT.”
It was totally counterintuitive to brand marketing, but it made sense for what we were doing.
Right about that time, I had drawn up what I called the Jordan Manifesto. I had a diagram where I explained that for Nike to get a bigger share of the basketball shoe market, it would be better if Jordan peeled away to be its own entity. They were going to compete against one another a little bit, but in the aggregate Jordan probably would take market share away from somebody else. And it happened exactly that way, so I was vindicated.
I FELT LIKE THE JORDAN VIII INCORPORATED A LITTLE BIT OF A BAROQUE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY, MEANING ADORNED, COMPLEX AND WITH LOTS OF DETAIL. IT’S WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN HIS LIFE AT THE TIME, AS WELL.
The Bulls were about to win their third straight championship, and everything was getting bigger for Michael, on and off the court.
So the VIII was an explosion of design ideas, even to its detriment. It wasn’t one of my favorite shoes in the end, but it did resonate at the time because it reflected Michael. And it reflected where I was, too.
There were people writing about the shoes in those days, but not so much from a business point of view. They weren’t looking at the shoes and seeing that we had removed the swoosh and replaced it with the Jumpman. They were writing about what we were doing almost from a point of curiosity.
Now, we have pieces in the Smithsonian, and the shoes are written about by the high-design community of American art. But back then the gist of an article was more about how weird we were, and how odd it was what we were doing.
The VIII was a supreme, extreme example of a basketball shoe that I admit was a little bit over the top, but maybe for a good reason. We were just going to continue to keep veering off from where everyone else was going.
MOM
I KNOW PEOPLE SAY THAT WHEN THEY LOOK AT MICHAEL, THEY DON’T SEE HIM OF A PARTICULAR COLOR THEY SEE HIM AS MICHAEL
I always told him to see people as people, no matter what color they are, because when you cut their skin, their blood is the same color as yours. They are just like you. But I also told my children not to allow themselves to ever be intimidated by anyone.
I know people have said Michael is not black enough. I don’t know what they mean when they say he’s not black enough. He knows his culture. He knows where he came from. So what do you mean? Is it that you feel like he hasn’t had enough poverty? That he wasn’t raised in poverty? You have to address Mr. Jordan and myself for that, because we made sure he would know both sides.
HOWARD “H” WHITE I’ve been around Bill Russell. I’ve sat and listened to Bill. So it’s real hard to say MJ had more drive than Bill Russell, because I don’t know if that’s true or not. Let’s look at it from this perspective. People often say with Michael, “What does he stand for? He doesn’t do anything for the black community. He doesn’t do anything for the world.”
If people could just take the ethic he applies to everything he approaches in life, then that’s a whole heck of a lot more than telling somebody to do something.
THE ETHIC THAT HE COMES IN WITH, NO MATTER WHAT THE ENDEAVOR, IS WHAT THIS COUNTRY, WHAT THIS WORLD WAS BUILT ON.
The critics want something more, because they don’t understand or appreciate what he’s already given.
Michael once said, “I never want somebody to see me and wonder who they saw.” Michael was aware somebody might be seeing him for the first time, or the only time. When they left, he wanted them to say, “Wow, that was Michael Jordan.”
We were all sitting around one day before a game. He said, “Where are we going? We’re going to work, and we all should look like we are.” So you found that everybody around Michael was well dressed, and represented themselves in a way that followed Michael’s example. Take that message. Integrate those values, his example into your life, and then let’s see what you have.
LEADER LEAD. A LOT OF PEOPLE TALK ABOUT LEADING, BUT IN THE END THAT’S ALL THEY’RE DOING, TALKING. I HAVE ALWAYS LED BY EXAMPLE. I DON’T BELIEVE IN TALKING ABOUT WHAT I PROVIDE TO OTHERS. THE LAST THING I NEED OR WANT IS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO MYSELF. THAT’S NOT WHO I AM.
MOM Michael and his dad had it all planned, Michael told us to come to Phoenix, where the Bulls were playing in the 1993 Finals. He said, “If you want to see the last game, everybody must be there because this is it.” He flew everybody in the family to Phoenix, and, boy, did they party that night the Bulls won the third championship.
HE TOLD ALL OF US, “THIS IS THE LAST GAME BECAUSE I’M PLAYING BASEBALL NEXT YEAR.”
No one knew except those in the room. He and his dad had always talked about what it might have been like if Michael had played baseball instead of basketball, because they both loved baseball.
His daddy said, “You’ll never know until you try.” That started them talking about it. Michael held tight to his plan, even after the death of Mr. Jordan. One of Michael’s dreams was to see if he could hit the ball as well as he did when he was younger. It was a challenge, and he loves challenges.
BUT IT WAS ALL ABOUT HOLDING ON TO A DREAM.
You could never say, “I can’t” around our family. How do you know you can’t? Go try it—that was a slogan for us. If you try, then you can’t fail. You have failed if you don’t try. You only have one life. Don’t allow somebody else to live that life for you.
FRED WHITFIELD They were playing Washington, and a bunch of Michael’s close friends had come up from North Carolina. The team was staying in Annapolis, Maryland, at the Marriott. I’ll never forget it.
Michael said, “I’m going to walk away from the game. I’m going to let this game go, and play baseball,” Fred Glover, one of our friends, said, “Man, you can’t do that. We need our ride to keep rolling.”
But Michael said he was going to let it go, and he was serious. When that whole thing went down, we were all in shock.
TINKER HATFIELD Michael had gone to Asia for Nike around the time we started working on the Jordan IX. I remember being influenced by Japanese design. If you look at the back of the shoe, that’s the rising sun. I thought MJ was really rising into his total dominance. Chicago was on its way to a third
straight championship, and Michael had risen above any critics of his playing ability.
WE ENDED UP WITH KIND OF A JAPANESE SIMPLICITY.
Michael didn’t consider the leather on the front of the shoe a tip because I kept calling it a rand, and I think I kind of pulled one over on him. It actually looked pretty good because it wrapped all the way around the shoe and came up the back. It just looked fast. I liked the idea of the fingers on the side, which was a technical element to get more of a lateral support system.
ALL THE WORDS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SHOE STOOD FOR QUALITIES OF MICHEAL
The French word is liberté. We were trying to find words in multiple languages that defined Michael and his life, because by that point he had become a global superstar. I did a rough sketch, but Mark Smith came in and really designed the bottom in a beautiful, graphic way.
As a matter of fact, when I was asked which shoe should go on the statue in front of the United Center in Chicago, I chose the Jordan IX. They showed me a clay model of the pose, and I thought the neatest outsole we had that actually told a story was the IX. When Michael retired in 1993, he wanted to wear something familiar, so we turned the Jordan IX into his baseball shoe.
RIGHT SHOE
DÉDIÉ (FRENCH)-DEDICATED
FUERZA (SPANISH)-FORCE
INTENSO (ITALIAN)-INTENSE
LIBERTÉ (FRENCH)-FREEDOM
ANMUTIG (GERMAN)-GRACEFUL
LEFT SHOE
cnopt (RUSSIAN)-SPORT
UHURU (SWAHILI)-INDEPENDENCE
CBO6OAa (RUSSIAN)-FREEDOM
ATHLETISCH (GERMAN)-ATHLETIC
MUUNDAJI (SWAHILI)-HOPE
Driven from Within Page 7