Air Bargain: Michael Jordan, ESPN’s The Last Dance, and the Nascent Player Empowerment Era
Humans like Michael Jordan permanently alter the parameters of popular culture. In that light, it’s no wonder why Jordan, more than 20 years since he last appeared in the NBA Finals, still captivated millions in ESPN’s The Last Dance. Jordan is more complicated than most because he’s more talented than most. To fully appreciate Jordan’s contributions to American society, however, one must prioritize historical context over impossible standards of decorum.
Few characters embodied America’s corporate boom during the 1990s better than Jordan. In turn, some commentators reduce Jordan to a stereotype: a ruthless, obsessively-competitive, selfish, greedy capitalist. Indeed, Jordan often exaggerated reality — his shrugs; the wagging of his tongue; or literally his talking trash while swinging a baseball bat and smoking a cigar — because Jordan was nothing if not a showman.
Jordan becoming the first black billionaire professional athlete in a country founded on the economics of the transatlantic slave trade was contingent on him becoming the greatest entertainer in American history. Jordan’s remarkable legacy is slighted, however, when misguided opinions mistake his triumphs for treachery.
For example, in his recent article for The Nation, Dave Zirin delights in taking down Jordan as a capitalist demigod by relentlessly contrasting him against an idealized Bill Russell:
“For Russell, the love was saved for his team. The wall came up as sponsors, fans, and opponents demanded their piece of him. Jordan was the opposite. Outside the team, he gave us that winning smile and sold us products, but his squad got the back of his hand. Jordan was pure capitalism: expanding his brand off the court, and a cutthroat bully with his own team. Russell was pure resistance: finding love and solidarity among teammates and fiercely holding onto his sense of self off of the court. His white teammates who didn’t show him solidarity, particularly on Russell’s proud struggles against racism, still loved him then and feel guilty today that they didn’t do more. One gets the feeling that the only regrets Jordan’s teammates have is that they didn’t stand up to him more and instead let him break their will. Russell had teammates who became his brothers for life. Jordan has generated only wary respect and resentful awe. The only people who “ride or die” for Jordan are personal assistants, trainers, and bodyguards: people paid to be in his presence.
In contrast to Russell’s “pure resistance” of sponsorship, fandom, and media, Jordan is reduced to an attention whore. “We are watching a human being who has been damaged, and then never hesitated to damage those around him,” writes Zirin, describing Jordan with the candor of Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer. In this version of history, Russell only failed to secure lucrative endorsements because his “love was saved for his team,” and not because in the 1950s and ’60s it was impossible for Russell to secure national commercials or signature sneakers with major American corporations.
In addition, Zirin conflates his “feeling” about Jordan’s teammates possessing “only wary respect and resentful awe” for Jordan for a license to proclaim Jordan as a “cutthroat bully” who broke his teammates’ will. Oddly enough, many of Jordan’s teammates refute Zirin’s “feeling” in their interviews during The Last Dance, instead speaking for themselves about the complex-but-rewarding experience of being co-workers with Jordan. Moreover, in singling out Jordan’s “personal assistants, trainers, and bodyguards” as his only loyalists, Zirin conveniently forgets that Jordan’s teammates also qualify as “people paid to be in Jordan’s presence.”
As well as being a great read on sports labor issues, Zirin is correct that Jordan’s curt leadership style is unnecessary for winning. Russell, Tim Duncan, and Dirk Nowitzki are great examples of championship-caliber players who led their teams with emotional intelligence. But as comedian John Mulaney once joked about working with Mick Jagger, it is difficult to imagine world-renowned superstars being “nice” considering their extravagant, insane version of life. In other words, when Jordan says that he never asked his teammates to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself, that is a valid version of leadership coming from the most heavily scrutinized athlete in the world. And, not for nothing, Jordan’s version of leadership proved to be extraordinarily successful.
Another recent take down of Jordan was penned by Matthew Miranda for the Jacobin. Miranda loses credibility for, on the one hand, slamming Jordan as a “capitalist icon,” but, on the other hand, excusing former Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause’s treatment of Scottie Pippen. A poor African-American kid from Central Arkansas, Pippen was responsible for caring for two wheelchair-bound family members. Yet Krause locked Pippen into a deal which made him only the 122nd highest-paid player in the NBA by 1998, and Bulls management refused to renegotiate. Meanwhile, Krause publicly pursued the flashy signing of international prospect Toni Kukoč, who played Pippen’s position, ultimately securing him in 1993.
Yet here was Krause, openly wooing an outsider and paying him more than Pippen. Why risk rocking the boat? Krause wasn’t content to sit on a winner. He’d inherited Jordan, the most significant piece of the puzzle, the one everyone could always point to and say, “That’s why they won.” A relentless drive to win, to do it his way, to show the world he wasn’t satisfied, even after three titles: that kept Krause going.
Miranda also clings to a common demerit against Jordan’s record: his failure to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt in 1990:
One criticism of MJ that has persisted over the decades is his refusal to endorse North Carolina Democrat Harvey Gantt’s 1990 Senate run against Republican Jesse Helms, the racist incumbent. (Jordan grew up in Wilmington and attended the University of North Carolina.) Jordan’s infamous defense was that “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Today Jordan says that comment was made off-the-cuff as a joke to teammates. Yet he continues to defend his lack of involvement: “I wasn’t a politician. I was focused on my craft. Was that selfish? Probably. But that was my energy. That’s where my energy was.” Nike, McDonald’s, Gatorade, Hanes, and a host of brands could happily prove Jordan wrong on this claim. He was focused on his craft. But he was also focused on helping companies move more merchandise. That’s also where his energy was.
Indeed, Jordan has made a lot of money. But consider that, for example, Jordan did not have enough leverage at the negotiating table to secure Pippen a no-trade clause heading into the 1997-’98 season. If Jordan couldn’t secure management’s promise not to trade Pippen before Chicago’s last dance season, then Jordan never actually had the leverage to secure Pippen more money in a renegotiation. To fully appreciate Jordan’s career is to understand that his greatest competition never actually wore jerseys but instead controlled sports from Manhattan.
Furthermore, a deeper study of Jordan’s contracts show that Jordan was working within the confines of the nascent player empowerment era (i.e., a much different economic landscape from the one today’s stars enjoy). When Jordan left the University of North Carolina for the NBA in 1984, the idea that a African-American professional athlete could become a billionaire was foolish. But Jordan’s personal sacrifices, which include living an isolated life defined by his freakish talent and ungodly success, created a future where professional athletes — stars and role players, alike — could make life-changing money for their basketball talent alone.
For example, Jordan’s agent David Falk secured Jordan “enormous money at the time” with his eight-year, $25.7 million renegotiated contract in 1988. On the one hand, by taking the deal, as Falk recently told Andrew Brandt, Jordan eliminated the possibility of being made whole as an unrestricted free agent. On the other hand, Falk secured Jordan $5M per year at a time where only Patrick Ewing ($3M), Magic Johnson ($2.5M), and Kareem Abdul-Jaabar ($2M) were making comparable money on the court.
Before the press conference announcing Jordan’s extension, Falk argued that Krause should be fair and either keep all terms undisclosed or inform the media of both the contract years and the amount of money. After all, Jordan was only locking in long-term because it was the highest contract in NBA history. But Krause had already acted out, issuing a press release announcing it as simply an eight-year deal. Krause only wished to proclaim his own genius — that he was the man who locked Jordan into a long-term deal many understood would age poorly.
By the time Jordan’s extension expired, the landscape was completely different. Larry Bird was the first player to earn $5M or more with a salary of $7.1M in the 1991-’92 season, followed by Magic Johnson becoming the first player to earn at least $14.7M in 1994. Finally, Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks became the first player to earn $18.7M for the 1995-’96 season. Like now, NBA teams could exceed the salary cap to sign their own players (i.e., Bird Rights). However, in the 1990s, the NBA had no provisions for max contracts or a luxury tax in the CBA. Thus, when Jordan’s extension expired, and coming off the 1996 NBA championship, it was Falk’s job to ask for the moon. Notably, the NBA’s salary cap was first introduced in the 1984-’85 season — Jordan was drafted in 1984 — and was capped at $3.6M, but has since ballooned to more than $109M.
In fact, former Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock once said regarding the extent of his business interest in signing Jordan away from Chicago:
“If no salary cap existed and there were no rules against player-owners, I guess we’d rename our team the Jordanaires and make him owner, general manager, coach and whatever else he’d want. . . . It’s almost impossible to put a dollar amount on Michael’s worth.”
Interestingly, both of Jordan’s final two contracts with the Bulls were reportedly negotiated by Falk in less than an hour. In 1997, Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who originally wanted Jordan to accept a two-year deal, backed off that idea, but only after rebuffing Jordan’s request for assurances about Pippen. Of course, Pippen then famously missed the first couple months of the 1997-’98 season recovering from elective surgery, which further exaggerated Jordan’s superhuman workload and unnecessarily inflamed tensions between players during a title run.
Falk couldn’t rely on comparing Jordan to other great athletes at the time because Jordan generated significantly more revenue — for the Bulls and for the NBA — than his colleagues.
Falk sought alternative comparisons for Jordan’s next deal. Wayne Gretzky was making less than $10M per year to be the best hockey player in the world; even the combined salaries of the highest-paid NFL player (Deion Sanders, $13.5M) and MLB player (Cecil Fielder, $9.2M) seemed too small for Jordan. A better 1:1 comparison to Jordan was actor Jim Carrey, who was paid a minimum of $20M per movie without a guarantee of box-office success.
Largely because of Jordan, the Bulls set the standard in apparel sales for team sports, and the Bulls sold out 610 consecutive home games from 1987 through 2000. According to Forbes, in 1985, Reinsdorf led an investment group that paid $16M for the Bulls. Four NBA teams were sold that year — including in Milwaukee, Denver and Utah — with the Bulls somehow being the cheapest of the bunch despite having drafted Jordan in 1984.
Six NBA championships later and the Bulls were the NBA’s most valuable team. Although the Bulls have reached the Eastern Conference Finals only once since 1998, the franchise’s value continues to rise, and has only been surpassed in value by the New York Knicks, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Golden State Warriors. The Bulls ranked fourth in the NBA at $3.2 billion in Forbes’ annual franchise valuations in February, producing an annualized return for Reinsdorf of 17 percent versus 6.7 percent for the S&P 500 before dividends.
After making $3.8M the previous season, Jordan signed a one-year contract for $30.1M to compete for a fifth NBA championship when the salary cap stood at just $24.3M. The following year, Jordan received a 10 percent raise on a $33.1M deal despite the salary cap being $26.9M. But the Bulls were the real winners on that deal, locking Jordan into another relative bargain while simultaneously convincing him to rebuff an offer to play in the NBA’s largest market. According to the Chicago Tribune, Jordan initially was willing to sign in Chicago for just $18M, but Falk hatched a plan to secure Jordan, in addition to salary on the court, as much as $15M to be a spokesman for other Knicks’ properties such as Sheraton hotel chain and Cablevision. Notably, NBA commissioner David Stern reportedly approved of the arrangement despite the apparent circumvention of CBA rules; the Bulls argued with the league, but Stern made an exception for Jordan because his potential market value as a spokesman was a unique opportunity for the NBA. In other words, the NBA was prepared to allow the separate deal without the money counting against the Knicks’ cap so that Jordan could play at Madison Square Garden about 50 times a year.
After roping the Knicks (and Stern) into the fray, Falk secured a signing package of $25M, which anchored the Bulls much higher than the artificial $12M ceiling they believed constrained all other teams because of the salary cap. Otherwise, the Bulls might have lowballed Jordan for between $15 and $20M “as a courtesy” because no other team could match. In that light, it’s easy to understand why Reinsdorf, who also owned the White Sox, spent over $3M per year during Jordan’s baseball hiatus — a relatively modest fee compared to his Bulls profit — to keep Jordan tied to his Chicago empire.
Falk also took Brandt down memory lane about Jordan’s more humble beginnings in business. Today, the Player Empowerment Era is in full swing, but at the time Jordan negotiated his first contract with the Chicago Bulls a much more patriarchal system ruled the day. Jordan leaned on North Carolina basketball’s paterfamilias Dean Smith for contract advice, which resulted in Jordan unnecessarily adding two non-guaranteed team options, at just $1M and $1.2M, respectively, to the end of his rookie deal. Falk didn’t negotiate that deal, but according to him, Michael was “always behind the eight-ball” after signing such a team-friendly contract. Smith likely confused the business realities for an established white coach as the same for a young black player — conflating the additional option years as assurances from the Bulls when they were anything but helpful to Jordan.
Falk contextualizes these negotiations further by pointing out that “Madison Avenue” (i.e., NBA headquarters) still thought the league was “too black” — a reputation which allegedly harmed the league’s popularity with white people, and which manifested in precarious league-wide policies (e.g., the NBA’s dress code). Not one NBA player had a national marketing campaign of any degree or kind before Jordan negotiated his groundbreaking contract with Nike. According to Falk, McDonalds and Coca Cola wouldn’t sign a black team athlete without any championships to a national deal, instead signing Jordan to local deals in Chicago and North Carolina markets.
It’s easy to point to all the money Jordan made as a result, but the ingenuity of his commercial success cannot be understated. In other words, reducing Jordan to a corporate shill is lazy and ahistorical. Jordan’s initial five-year Nike deal signed in 1984 was worth $500,000 annually (or about $1.2M in today’s dollars) plus royalties. Jordan’s Nike earnings last year was $130 million, according to Forbes, or four times as much as that of LeBron James, who has the NBA’s second-biggest shoe deal. Nike built the Jordan Brand into a massive standalone business worth $3.1B, and the company recently announced its first billion-dollar quarter behind Nike’s 86 percent share of the U.S. basketball performance shoe market. Notably, in 2014, Michael Jordan made more money than he did on the court for his entire NBA career, including $100 million from combined Nike, Jumpman, and Air Jordan royalties.
Furthermore, Jordan had to jump through significant hoops to lift the Air Jordan brand off the ground in the first place. Jordan’s challenges included the NBA immediately banning the Air Jordan 1 for failure to conform with Chicago’s uniform colors, and fining him $5,000 each game that he wore them. The shoes were originally released to stores in April 1985. ESPN reported that Nike sold $70M worth of the shoes one month into the release, and more than $100M by the end of the year. But while Nike co-founder Phil Knight called the success of Air Jordan 1, “the perfect combination of quality product, marketing, and athlete endorsement,” it’s important to note that the name Air Jordan was only a happy accident born from Nike’s insulting original stance.
According to Falk, Jordan wished to call his apparel line “Michael Jordan,” following the common precedent of designers naming their businesses after themselves (e.g., Ralph Lauren). But in a historical example of powerful voices telling athletes to shut up and dribble, Nike insisted nobody would take the business seriously if “some athlete” claimed to be a “designer.” It goes without saying that one can appreciate Jordan’s branding power without believing Jordan was actually stitching the fabric on any of his shirts. Luckily, Falk and Jordan hatched the famous “Air Jordan” double entendre, which in the long run probably made everybody involved a little richer. But the true substance of that anecdote shouldn’t be lost to history.
Circling back to the common criticism surrounding “Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too,” and his infamous non-endorsement of Gantt, Jordan is judged by an impossible standard. When commentators drag Jordan in contrast to Russell or Muhammad Ali, they are conflating different moments in American history. Ali didn’t want to die in a foreign country for no discernible reason, and Russell was attempting relative celebrity as a African-American man amidst Jim Crow; the stakes for Ali and Russell were fundamentally different from Jordan’s circumstance. Jordan endorsing one African-American politician is not the same thing as refusing to enlist in the army or fighting for civil rights.
Moreover, Jordan is judged by an obvious double standard as a African American man. Does the media demand comment from Larry Bird about the KKK forming in his home state of Indiana? Or Tom Brady about Americans suffering from diseases of despair as a direct result of income inequality? What about when the media turns a blind eye to Brett Favre stealing from welfare recipients during a global pandemic — in the state of Mississippi, no less, with its history of slavery, segregation, and oppression? One must not individualize politics or they will quickly lose the forest for the trees. Jordan’s positive impact on African-Americans is manifold: his leading by example proves to young people of color that they might actually achieve their wildest dreams if they work very, very hard (key word: might).
Additionally, Jordan’s progress laid the groundwork for future All-Stars like Damian Lillard — far from the greatest player in the league — to sign contracts for upward of a quarter of a billion dollars. Meanwhile, Lillard’s teammate Hassan Whiteside was drafted in the second round and barely played in the NBA before 2015, but has already earned $101.7M in player salary. The NBA in the wake of Jordan is overseeing a transfer of wealth from majority-white hands to mostly black and brown communities on a scale that historians will gush over for generations.
Finally, what about the history of the United States suggests that an African American man should ever part with his own financial security in exchange for upholding the ideals of American Democracy? “The space that these guys have to operate is just much different than the paradigm that Mike was dealing with,” said Wosny Lambre (aka “Big Wos”), co-host of the Woke Bros podcast. Incidentally, Jordan does have to protect his massive brand assets because massive corporations don’t willingly do business with young, minority radicals.
“This idea that [Jordan] was obligated [to risk his endorsement money] when every single countervailing force was working against him,” said co-host Michael Brooks on his own podcast. “Look at those countervailing forces — don’t demand he do something different.”
It requires great sanctimony to attempt compelling political activity from Jordan considering that his entire existence as an economic and cultural force is a political statement. Certainly that’s what the history of American property law suggests, as well as the reality that Jordan remains the only black billionaire professional athlete decades after his Bulls career ended. The argument about whether Jordan was “nice” is misguided, and the debate about how much money Jordan should personally donate should be replaced with louder appeals for more progressive taxation. In short, Jordan is not the reason why racism and classism still define the rules for doing business in this country. Instead, Jordan should be celebrated for transcending these heinous systems and living a life worth celebrating for all-time.
