Was Michael Jordan Too Short To Sign With adidas?

The tale has been told – Michael Jordan wanted to sign with adidas in 1984 but they never made him an offer. But it’s just resurfaced with an interesting wrinkle. According to a new article from The Wall Street Journal, adidas distributors wanted corporate to sign Jordan, believing the University of North Carolina star to be an athlete consumers could relate to.

adidas corporate, however, was intent to forego the likes of Jordan to sign big guys like Patrick Ewing and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:

“In 1984, Adidas made a misstep that presaged others. A University of North Carolina basketball star named Michael Jordan wanted a sponsorship deal with Adidas when he went professional, say people familiar with the matter.

Adidas distributors wanted to sign Mr. Jordan, says someone who was an Adidas distributor then. But executives in Germany decided shoppers would favor taller players and wanted to sponsor centers, the person says, adding: “We kept saying, ‘no—no one can relate to those guys. Who can associate with a seven-foot-tall guy?’ ”

Adidas signed centers of the era, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—it still sells sneakers named for him. Mr. Jordan in 1984 signed with Nike, which built his name into a blockbuster basketball business. Mr. Jordan and Adidas decline to comment.”

While in retrospect this looks like an unprecedented belly flop for adidas, the German sports gear producer deserves a measure of slack in passing up Jordan. In the mid-’80s the athlete endorsement paradigm was still figuring itself out, a time when product was created and an athlete was more or less tacked onto it. And adidas wasn’t alone in failing to fawn over MJ. Converse whiffed, too – although to their credit they did express a desire to bring Jordan aboard. And give him equal billing with Mark Aguirre, which Jordan politely declined.

A quick glance at some pluses in Nike’s corner in 1984 – a unique connection to basketball, design talent in Peter Moore, Bruce Kilgore and Tinker Hatfield, ties to marketing geniuses Wieden+Kennedy – heavily suggest Michael Jordan and Nike made the right choice at the time to partner up, and thirty years of phenomenal success guarantee it was.

That’s the primary reason why pondering a world where Air Jordan flies for adidas, Converse, or Reebok is so fascinating. Jordan signing anywhere other than Nike changes so many big and small things – Nike’s long-term future, that athlete endorsement paradigm, sneaker design and technology, scores of related industries, even down to you reading these words here and now. Pretty mind-bending stuff.