While establishing Nike as the biggest sporting apparel brand in the world, Michael Jordan accumulated $2,600,000,000 worth of wealth himself. Jordan’s deal with Nike ensured him a part of the sales revenue. Soon, both Nike and Jordan took off and established themselves as the frontrunners of a billion dollar industry. While Nike reigns a tier above any of its competitors, one of Jordan’s close friends, Samuel L. Jackson feels otherwise. In fact, the popular actor has not owned a pair of Nikes for more than three decades.
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Samuel L. Jackson is among the few people who share a deep bond with Jordan. Golf might be the reason the two started bonding as Jackson recently talked about playing with Joran periodically. He also addressed the same while shopping for some Reebok sneakers.
Samuel L. Jackson prefers Reebok over Nike despite his friendship with Michael Jordan
Samuel L. Jackson started his Hollywood career back in the 80s and got hooked up with Nike by a fellow actor who had a deal with the company. The brand had just started booming at the time. However, Nike hesitated, and Jackson got a catalog from Reebok by that time.
“[The fellow actor] called Nike, they were like, ‘Who?’ And then the next day Reebok showed up, gave me these catalogs…and Nike called later and I’m like, ‘That’s alright,'” Jackson revealed, while Sneaker Shopping With Complex. Since then, the Django Unchained actor hasn’t owned a pair of Nikes. However, he does like the idea of his friend Michael Jordan making a great living off of Nike.
Jackson pointed out that MJ is making a boatload of money through the sales revenue of his Air Jordans. He also revealed that the two of them used to play golf a lot back in the day.
Jackson owns 150 pairs of Adidas but not a single Nike. Looks like he took the hesitation Nike showed as an insult and still feels strongly about it.
Like Nike’s hesitation with Jackson, Adidas had second thoughts about signing a 6ft 6′ basketball player
Adidas was Jordan’s first preference to sign a sneaker deal with, as he was coming out of UNC in 1984. However, the brand was going through some management changes at the time and made the mistake of not offering the 6ft 6′ guard his own line of sneakers.
Nike pounced and offered the #3 overall pick of that year’s draft a $2.5 million deal. That would become the greatest decision made by a company ever as Nike would become the world’s biggest sports shoe/apparel brand by the late 90s.
The Jordan brand alone has made the company around $19 billion. That’s just in the last five years. What Jordan and Nike did together might never happen again.
