Michael Jordan: Adidas Biggest Mistake!

in the beginning it could have been adidas yeah tell me tell me how that went down what was going on in your head oh you know the thing is i never wore nike shoes until i signed a nike contract um all through college we were converse and uh up to that point my favorite shoe was adidas shoe you know and at the time that everybody was starting recruiting me about what shoes to wear i was pro adidas you know the whole time and then once i went through the presentation with nike um you know they really made a grave effort of trying to you know have me have my input on the shoes designing any shoes that i wanted to wear but then i was very loyal i went back to adidas the adidas contact that i had and said look you know this is the nike contract if you come anywhere close you know i sign with you guys give me something just anywhere close to what they were putting on the table but at that time adidas was a european brand um product that they didn't really make a strong you know push for the states and they didn't feel like it was worth it you know which in hindsight is perfect for me because it made my decision that much easier and i ended up with nike and from that point on the relationship just started to blossom if you didn't go with nike and adidas got you how would that change both you and how would that change adidas in nineteen well it's hard to say that that what if if should never be in the dictionary because you never see the flip side of that i think the thing that um would have been consistent would have been that my play would have dictated you know everything off the court you know i don't think the shoes would have changed my whole outlook in terms of how i played the game but i think i couldn't enhance the you know the shoe as it in in in terms of how it would have been marketed so i mean would would the brand still be as strong if it was an adidas brand we'll never know you know i because a lot of it transcended what was happening on the basketball court to the marketing aspect all my other marketing from mcdonald's to coke all that came in you know behind all the way i was playing the game of basketball so adidas could have pulled off all that as much as nike you know so i don't know but the good thing about it is i'm happy where i am you know i'm happy with the relationship i'm happy every everything worked out for the best

Channel: mikedamz

Views: 3,102,836

Keywords: Michael Jordan, Air Jordan, MJ, Chicago bulls, basketball, NBA, sneakerheads, complex, hypebeast, jordan brand, jordan, adidas

Id: nWi_VZlIhP0

Length: 2min 22sec (142 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

What an astute response by MJ.

[u/PR05ECC0]

Nike and MJ were perfect for each other. I don't think it would have worked as well with Adidas. At that time like Jordan said Adidas was mostly a European brand.

[u/Cuseguy420]

Adidas...SORRY FOR YA!! I feel really bad for that top Adidas marketing rep that dropped that ball.

[u/SterlinkArcher]

Its all about the Nikes.

[u/rafacakes]

The sports world today would seriously be a different place!