Jordan adds fuel to the fire
by Mars Riley
On Friday, Michael Jordan was accepted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. In many ways it felt like a final farewell to the playing career of the sport’s greatest. After a few comebacks, this was an exclamation point for a basketball player who had no parallel. After six titles, six finals MVPs, five league MVPs, 14 All-Star appearances, ten scoring titles and two Olympic gold medals, Jordan finally got to put on the jacket and take his seat with the closest thing he has to peers.
Even though Michael Jordan, the basketball player, is over, Michael Jordan, the brand, is still getting bigger. It was announced this week that Air Jordan, his shoe brand, will top $1 billion in annual revenue. This is the first time a product connected with a specific athlete has reached this magic number. This is especially impressive when you consider Michael Jordan hasn’t played for over six years – golf with Charles Barkley doesn’t count.
So how is it that Michael Jordan’s popularity continues to grow? Are the shoes that good? Are the designs that cool? Is his legend growing as his playing career fades from memory?
Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t being helped by the critics in various newspaper editorials, sports shows and blogs from around the globe. Sensing that Jordan’s acceptance speech will probably be the last time Michael Jordan, the man, will be part of the public discourse, they have come out in force, using him as an example of everything that is wrong with globalism, commercialism, professional sports and, worst of all, the 90s. The critics seem hell-bent on revealing the dark side of the man behind the legend, nitpicking every negative thing he has ever said and applying it to whatever their agenda is.
A lightning rod for this criticism has been the exhibit Becoming Legendary: The Story of Michael Jordan that was on display last month at the Basketball Hall of Fame as a lead-in to Friday night’s ceremony. The problem with the exhibit was the fact that it was being paid for, installed, written and curated by the Jordan Brand/Nike. Normally, exhibits include personal mementos and artifacts from the career of the person, but this one was filled with Nike shoe displays, posters and televisions playing, you guessed it, Jordan Brand/Nike commercials. In other words, the exhibit was celebrating Michael Jordan the brand instead of the athlete. The few artifacts that were displayed (championship rings, balls, sneakers, and even underwear) were not even his. They all belonged to Jordan Brand/Nike.
Critics said the exhibit experience should be about the person not the brand. They wanted it to be about getting to know the real Michael Jordan.
Well, during his acceptance speech on Friday the critics got the real Michael Jordan and they didn’t like that either. It seems to have caught many of them by surprise that Michael Jordan is a very competitive guy. They wanted him to be more like the brand: polished, humble, and godlike. Instead, he was salty, cocky, and true. In a speech that included many anecdotes about how he used slights (large, small, and imagined) to “add wood to that fire” to compete at a high level, Michael Jordan showed the side of his personality that drove him to become the best of the best. It was clear during the speech that he still had scores to settle. To the high school coach who picked another player over him he said, “You made a mistake, dude.” He recalled a tit-for-tat with Bulls assistant coach Tex Winter where after a winning game he had been told that “there is no ’I’ in team.” Jordan’s response was “yeah, but there is an ‘I’ in win.” And to Jerry Krause, the Bulls general manager, who famously said, “Organizations win championships,” Jordan said, “I didn’t see organizations playing with the flu in Utah.”
While conversations about Michael Jordan playing basketball have been relegated to premature LeBron James comparisons, Jordan the brand continues to grow. Will his accomplishments ever be matched? Will his greatness ever be rivaled? None of us know. And this keeps adding fuel to the fire of the Jordan brand.
