Earlier today, I watched the Ben Affleck-directed sports biopic Air at AMC theaters.
Air conveyed the true story of how Nike—which was a struggling underdog trying to compete with fellow shoe makers Adidas and Converse at the time—landed a lucrative 1984 deal with an athlete who would become the greatest ever to play the game of basketball: Michael Jordan.
Air followed the story of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a strong-minded recruiter who traveled around the country to look for talented basketball players that could potentially be endorsed by Nike. Working with him on these assignments were Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman)...two executives who gave Vaccaro beef for his unrelenting quest to sign Jordan while helping him at the same time.
Chris Messina played David Falk, Michael Jordan's agent who constantly butt heads with Vaccaro (at least on the phone), while Viola Davis portrayed Deloris Jordan—the business-savvy and insightful mom of the future NBA champion. Julius Tennon played James Jordan, the level-headed and very supportive dad of MJ who, in real life, tragically died due to gun violence in 1993.
(MJ briefly left the NBA to play minor league baseball following the death of his father, before returning to basketball in 1995 and winning his fourth of six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls the following year.)
Matthew Maher played Peter Moore...the skateboard-riding designer who was responsible for fabricating the Air Jordan shoes, and even came up with the idea to replace the 'Swoosh' with the 'Jumpman' logo featuring Michael Jordan's flying silhouette on this specific Nike brand. Marlon Wayans portrayed George Raveling...a good friend of Sonny Vaccaro who was once offered $3 million for his copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
And continuing his simultaneous directing-and-acting tradition that started with 2007's Gone Baby Gone, 2010's The Town and 2012's Argo, Ben Affleck both helmed Air and portrayed Phil Knight—the purple Porsche-driving, buddhist-minded CEO of Nike. Sonny's deal with Jordan almost fell through after his mother was adamant about her son receiving a percentage of the profits that would be earned with each Air Jordan sold, but it was Knight who went against normal business practices in the footwear industry and agreed to the Jordans' request, achieving this much-needed victory for Nike.
My review doesn't seem to give this indication, but Air is probably one of the most inspirational films I've recently seen on the big screen. The journey to land Michael Jordan at Nike was just as inspirational as Jordan himself...with Vaccaro, Strasser and Co. literally risking everything at their company to have a young NBA rookie sign a shoe deal with them.
According to the final montage before the end credits, MJ is earning $400 million in annual passive income from his Air Jordan brand—while Nike itself earns up to $3 billion a year selling the NBA Hall of Famer's shoes. Sonny Vaccaro was shown at the beginning of the movie to be a basketball savant who could tell which young rookie was star material and who wasn't in the big league, and him being the one to sign the athlete who would be emulated by future NBA All-Stars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James years later only solidified that.
Air is a cinematic triumph in regards to how inspirational it was, and how the underdogs sometime win. Though according to this movie, did the Nike tagline "Just do it" really originate from a convict who was about to be executed?
And the founder of Adidas was a former Nazi? Wow.
John Swart / AP / REX / Shutterstock.com
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