'Air' and the Professional Sport of Marketing

I was 15 when I got my first pair of Jordans in 1986. I didn’t play any kind of organized ball, though I liked to mess around on the playground. They just looked really cool. Red and black high tops? Sign me up. At least as important, posters of His Airness dotted my bedroom walls alongside my heavy metal heroes. Getting the sneakers was just the logical next step. Or, as Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon put it in the Nike commercials of the time, it’s gotta be the shoes.

I didn’t know it then, but I was buying into the great sports marketing mammon.