Even though he was the third pick in 1984’s NBA draft, Michael Jordan was no sure thing. Just ask the guy who drafted him.
“We wish Jordan were 7 feet, but he isn’t,” said Chicago Bulls General Manager Rod Thorn. “There just wasn’t a center available. What can you do? Jordan isn’t going to turn this franchise around. I wouldn’t ask him to.”
You can’t really blame him for his skepticism. Some people thought Jordan was too tall to be a shooting guard, too thin to be a power forward. They worried whether he could (ironically) shoot the ball. And even those who believed Jordan would become a great player, he’d be just one of many.
But in the movie Air, three people believed that Michael Jordan could become better than great.
One: Michael Jordan.
Two: his mom.
Three: Sonny Vaccaro, an executive for Nike, a company best known in 1984 for its running shoes.
In the world of basketball, Nike was barely on the map. Converse was the big dog. All the NBA’s best—from Magic Johnson to Larry Bird to Julius “Dr. J” Erving himself—wore them. Adidas was the trendsetting second fiddle, quickly becoming a brand darling in the hip-hop world. When he played college hoops at North Carolina, Jordan wore Converse on the court and loved his Adidas off it.
Nike? That brand that made shoes for jogging suburbanites? Puleeeze.
But Sonny watched the tape of Michael Jordan and saw greatness in the making. He had an audacious plan to bring the basketball guard into the Nike fold.
His job, his future and perhaps the fate of Nike itself hung in the balance of Sonny’s corporate equivalent of a half-court shot.
But hey, as some guy was destined to say, You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
Some guy named Michael Jordan.
It’s hard to quantify most of what we see in this movie as inherently good or bad—other than to say that some folks made good business decisions around a very good basketball player.
Still, Sonny hints at the adversity that Michael had to overcome to become that very good basketball player. Cut from his high school basketball team, Michael willed himself to greatness (Sonny says).
And we do see a strong work ethic in play, as well. Sonny and a couple of other associates spend all weekend at the office preparing for an important presentation. And when the day of the presentation comes and Sonny’s worried that he hasn’t done enough, Nike’s Director of Marketing Rob Strasser reminds Sonny that he’s only human. “Sometimes the most you can do is all you can do,” he tells him.
But Rob also reminds Sonny of what else is at stake if Sonny’s gambit doesn’t work: a lot of people’s jobs. Rob, who’s divorced, tells Sonny about his 7-year-old daughter, whom he only gets to see on Sunday afternoons. Every Sunday, he brings her a pair of Nikes as a way to show his love for her. And while we’d say (and Rob would admit) that these gifts smack a bit of bribery, Rob’s desire to connect with his daughter is real. If Rob gets fired (which’ll likely happen if Nike doesn’t sign Michael), Rob says he’ll likely still buy his daughter shoes as long as he can. It’s perhaps only then that Sonny realizes it’s not just his neck on the line: It’s an office-full of others. And maybe those necks are more important than his own.
From real-world clips, it’s clear that the real Michael Jordan loved his mother, and we see evidence of that love and respect in the movie, too.
After Sonny spots something in Michael’s game tapes that make him sure that he’s the guy Nike needs to sign, he barges into Rob’s office. “I found him,” Sonny says.
“Who’ that, Jesus?” Rob asks facetiously.
It’s a throwaway line, and yet the movie gently suggests there’s something almost divine about Michael’s game. “Some things are eternal,” Sonny says, adding that Michael’s talents will be remembered long after he and everyone else at Nike are gone and forgotten.
Nike is named after the Greek goddess of victory. There’s a statue of a Buddha in Nike CEO Phil Knight’s office, and Sonny warns him not to rattle off any “Buddhist aphorisms.”
David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent, makes some very descriptive, somewhat sexually oriented threats toward Sonny when he believes the exec is going around his back. (He says, for instance, that he’ll have sex with Sonny’s skull.)
You see a few scandalous real-life flash-forward headlines about Michael Jordan—including some relating to his marital infidelity and divorce—land on screen.
Again, through headlines seen very briefly on screen, we learn that Michael’s father will ultimately be shot to death.
Phil Knight mentions that the name Nike was chosen because focus groups showed a preference for four-letter words. “I like four-letter words,” Sonny adds.
Boy, does he. And boy, so do a lot of other people. The f-word is used at least 65 times. The s-word is spoken another 16 times. And we also hear numerous uses of “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss”. God’s name is misused three times, once with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.
A couple of characters drink and talk at a bar.
In his push to sign Michael Jordan to a contract, Sonny also pushes into some questionably unethical territory. He bypasses Michael’s agent. He commits Nike financially to more than his boss agreed upon. When that boss, Phil Knight, accuses Sonny of rampant egoism, Sonny points out that Phil’s the only guy in the company who drives a grape-purple Porsche.
Sonny also regularly takes business-trip detours to Las Vegas and gambles heavily. We see a scene of him playing craps. Headlines remind us of Jordan’s own gambling habit. We hear that the late founder of Adidas was a member of the Hitler Youth Corps. A conversation takes place in the bathroom. We hear references to the alleged unfair labor practices Nike used to make its shoes.
The Michael Jordan/Nike partnership is considered one of the most revolutionary, and lucrative, relationships in sports history. Both the player and the shoe company have profited enormously together, and both continue to make crates full of money from the deal—even though Jordan retired 20 years ago.
The real charm in Air—besides, of course, its boardroom full of top-notch actors and totally awesome 1980s soundtrack—is rewinding the clock, to when Michael Jordan was an unproven NBA rookie and Nike was just a scrappy shoemaker. In fact, the only one that Jordan refused to even consider. It’s a fascinating story. And even if we’re just told one exaggerated side of it (the Internet will disgorge a host of other sides if you ask), there’s no question that the Oscar-winning Ben Affleck knows how to direct a powerful, engaging film. That’s only fitting, I suppose, given the powerful, engaging athlete at its center.
But it’s fitting in another way, too.
Give Jordan his props as perhaps the greatest basketball player—and one of the greatest athletes—of all time. But we know that the same competitive fire that drove Jordan to greatness could make him, sometimes, kind of a jerk. His ledger is filled not just with highlight-reel shots, but tawdry headlines. Sonny tells us that Americans love to build up our heroes and tear them down, but let’s be honest: Our heroes are often complicit in their own deconstruction.
Air, too, can soar—surprisingly high, considering its most riveting scenes take place in Nike’s boardrooms and cubicles. But when it falls, it hits hard. The language can be as blue as the original Air Jordan shoe (which, in a bit of poetic license, the film suggests started out red). Some of the ethics we see aren’t as praiseworthy as the film would like us to believe.
Jordan once famously said that he’s missed more than 9,000 shots in his career—including 26 would-be game winners. Air misses its share of shots as well. Does it miss enough to lose your game? The scoreboard won’t tell you.
Only you can decide.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
