Focus On Sport/Contributor/Getty Images; Courtesy of Flight Club; Alyssa Powell/Business Insider
Michael Jordan's partnership with Nike ended up being huge.
- Michael Jordan has one of the most celebrated athlete-endorsed brands of all time.
- But when the NBA player launched the Jordan Brand with Nike in 1984, he apparently didn't want to go ahead with the deal.
- "He didn't want to go," Jordan's agent David Falk said in a recent interview on Kevin Durant's and Rich Kleiman's interview series "The Boardroom." "He didn't know anything about it, didn't like the shoes, didn't want to go."
- Today, Nike is the preeminent sports brand in the world, and the Jordan Brand is still iconic.
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Of all the sneakers in the Nike brand, Air Jordans are perhaps the most iconic.
The Jordan Brand was born in 1984 from a deal between Michael Jordan and Nike, then an underdog in the sportswear world. When the NBA player was originally contemplating signing with Nike, he apparently didn't want to go ahead with the deal.
"He didn't want to go," Michael Jordan's sports agent David Falk said in a recent interview on Kevin Durant's and Rich Kleiman's interview series "The Boardroom." "He didn't know anything about it, didn't like the shoes, didn't want to go."
Falk, a prominent NBA sports agent who worked with Jordan, was a driving force behind the launch of the Jordan Brand. In his interview on "The Boardroom," which was published to YouTube on Tuesday, Falk explained how in the early 1980s, Nike was not the dominant brand it is today. That glory belonged to the Converse brand, which had been the official shoe of the Olympic Games for over 30 years and had signed deals with major athletes like Magic Johnson.
"And Adidas had everybody else that mattered," Falk said. "And I thought that Nike was the hungriest for Michael. That they needed him the most, that they would do the most."
Despite Jordan's hesitation, the deal happened and the Jordan Brand was born. The Air Jordan sneaker earned $100 million in 1985 for Nike, which went on to buy the Converse brand in 2003.
Today, Nike is the preeminent sports brand in the world, and the Jordan Brand is still iconic. Rare pairs of Air Jordans have gone for as much as $20,000 on resale marketplaces like StockX and Stadium Goods.