He’d worn Adidas shoes in college and saw no reason to switch, until Nike and Jordan’s agent provided him with about 7 million reasons. Jordan initially had no interest in Nike. And George said, 'Hey, man, you’re Michael Jordan. Michael was just standing there on the curb with his bags. "And a guy, a limo driver named George Koehler, happened to be there. "He didn’t even have a ride to pick him up to take him to the hotel where they were staying," Rick Telander says. But when he came to Chicago to begin his pro career, he was not exactly a celebrity. In 1984, Nike established a partnership with a basketball player who had failed to make his high school team as a sophomore, and then had a pretty good run at the University of North Carolina. And according to Knight, by noon the next day, every store carrying the Senorita Cortez had sold out.Įven that was small potatoes compared to what Phil Knight and Nike would eventually accomplish in terms of creating a need. In 1977, somebody from Nike got a pair of shoes called the “ Senorita Cortez” to Farrah Fawcett, then starring in a TV show called “Charlie’s Angels.” It followed that Knight had to have more entertainers in his shoes. By the mid-'70s, at an industry conference in Chicago, Knight was able to crow that he wasn’t in the shoe business: he was in the entertainment business. In a new book, " Shoe Dog," Knight recalls how he slipped from his recliner to the floor, drew the curtains and switched from water to vodka. But when the camera zoomed in on Shorter’s feet, he wasn’t. Shorter was supposed to be wearing what Knight was selling. In 1976, Frank Shorter stepped to the Olympic marathon starting line to defend his gold medal. Knight had decided that without an Olympian in his shoes, his company would lack status. He built a partnership with manufacturers in Japan, where the labor was less expensive. As a young man in the mid-'60s, Knight saw a need for better track shoes. Over the past 40 years, the shoes in which famous and wealthy men play basketball in the NBA have become desirable to people who play basketball at a much lower level … and to people who don’t play basketball at all, and that has led to some grim results.īut first things first, and one of the first things of note in this story is Phil Knight. "And if you ran track, you just took whatever, say, the school gave you, or whatever they had at the sporting goods store."įast-forward to the present. If you were playing basketball, you got Converse, and that was kind of it," says Rick Telander, late of Sports Illustrated, longtime recreational basketball player. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) This article is more than 5 years old. The Jordan brand from Nike played a big part in turning shoes into status symbols.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |