The story of Michael Jordan has been told and re-told. But the story of
his signature shoe? Not so much. Let's unbox the ending of the movie
adaptation of this famous sneaker saga. Warning: spoilers for "Air," just ahead.
When we meet Sonny Vaccaro, Nike's intrepid basketball scout,
he's presented as a gambler – a man who uses his knowledge of basketball to win
money to pour into yet another bet. But the chances he takes are always
rooted in his instinctive grasp of the game. In "Air," Sonny's journey is another gambit,
as he uses his sense of the game's cultural landscape to make a giant bet on Michael Jordan.
"I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan." "Oh, come on, man."
By the end of the film, we know that Sonny's gamble has paid off. He lands the Jordan deal,
gets Nike CEO Phil Knight to agree to give the Jordan family a revenue share on every shoe sold.
He also wins vindication, having advocated for what everyone else at Nike thought was
a crazy idea. He saw Jordan as the great player and icon that he would become,
even if no one seemed to believe him but himself and Jordan's mother, Deloris.
This time, though, Sonny doesn't just throw the payoff into the next gamble. Instead, he takes
the lessons he learned from the Jordan deal and pours them into advocacy for still more players,
eventually becoming a crusader for the rights of college athletes. Sonny has clearly grown,
even if he remains a gambler at heart.
As "Air" begins, Phil Knight is a comfortable, confident CEO who's built Nike into a major player
in the sneaker market, even if the company doesn't quite compete with Converse or Adidas. Nike's a
running shoe company, Phil is a runner, and these things all sit well with him. They feel like the
reliable standard of business at a time when the company is facing losses, which makes him very
risk-averse when Sonny suggests betting a huge chunk of his basketball budget on one player.
"I don't know."
"Seriously?"
But as Sonny points out to Phil -- more than once -- Nike was built on risk and Phil's
willingness to make gutsy choices on his way to the top. It's only by remembering that feeling,
through the rules he's enshrined on his office wall, that Phil can start to grow and evolve Nike
once again. When he focuses on his breathing, then makes the call to allow Jordan to get
a revenue share on his signature shoe, it's a sign that he's seen the truth of what the path
forward should be. It may seem like a nonchalant decision, but it's actually a paradigm shift
for Nike's zen master.
Though Michael Jordan is the focus of every other character in "Air," he doesn't get
much screen time at all. Instead, the avatar for the Jordan family is Michael's mother, Deloris,
who runs the family from her home in Wilmington and sees Sonny as an earnest dealmaker who could
truly do something special for her son. But Deloris Jordan is not just a savvy dealmaker
who understands how her son thinks and feels. In a movie full of strategists,
she proves to be the greatest long-term thinker. It's Deloris who advocates not just for Michael
to get a lucrative shoe deal (and a new car), but for Michael to work with a company that's
going to elevate him to the level she feels he deserves. It's Deloris who tells Sonny what
Michael will do once he makes it to the NBA, and it's Deloris who realizes that Michael has the
potential to be more than just a famous athlete. She advocates for him through the revolutionary
idea of revenue sharing, which brought untold fortune to the Jordan family. Deloris,
who went on to run charities in her family's name, saw Michael's rise as something that could lift
other Black families alongside her own - and through her advocacy, she made that possible.
Rob Strasser, Nike's long-suffering basketball marketing executive,
spends much of "Air" trying to manage everyone's expectations. He enters the movie intending to
pursue multiple middle-of-the-road incoming NBA players, trying to get the most bang out of his
division's meager budget. When Sonny comes to him with the idea of pursuing a single athlete,
he balks, insisting that it's the kind of decision that could lead to all the
Nike basketball employees losing their jobs.
"Look, if anybody back there asks where I am,
just tell them I'm sick." "You got it – sick in the head."
But there's more to this than pride for Rob. As he explains to Sonny, he's a divorced man who
only gets to see his daughter once a week, and his ability to give her free shoes and prove his worth
as a guy who works at Nike is a cornerstone of that relationship. If he loses his job,
he won't just lose income and purpose, but what he perceives as the best way to forge a
stronger bond in his fractured family. When the deal works, Rob's trust in Sonny is validated,
but so is the strength of his convictions. It's a moment of triumph that hits Rob on several levels,
which makes it more powerful.
Early in "Air," as Sonny is pleading with Phil for more resources to devote to the basketball
division, Phil begins to expound on why he likes the company the way it is -- before
the Jordan deal changes everything. They sell running shoes, Phil argues,
which are shoes that people wear while they're running, but also while they're doing errands,
or going to work, or just hanging around the house. It's a sound business model,
and while it's not built on cultural relevance, it is built on serving a very solid need.
When it comes to basketball shoes, Phil estimates the market cap on the product is perhaps a million
units, spread across all companies, because he just doesn't see people buying basketball
shoes to wear out in the world. Signing Jordan, and building not just one shoe but an entire
line around the young star, changes that forever. Adidas were the "cool" shoes when the film began,
but with Jordan at Nike, that began to shift, and soon Nike was at the center
not just of basketball, but pop culture. The company changed in a matter of years,
and it would never be the same again.
Though Michael Jordan is a character in "Air," and appears on-screen in certain pivotal scenes,
we never see the young star's face, except in archival footage that showcases the real Michael
Jordan. According to director Ben Affleck in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter,
this was a deliberate choice, because he knew the audience would project
their own version of Michael Jordan onto the character, no matter how he was portrayed.
Despite Jordan's relative absence from the story, "Air" is all about Jordan, and the recognition of
his legend even from an early age. In one pivotal scene, Sonny rewatches a single play from Jordan's
college days over and over. He realizes that the play was always designed for the 18-year-old
athlete to execute, and despite the pressure, Jordan was poised to win under any circumstances.
It's not just proof of talent or even a cool head under pressure. For Sonny -- and eventually
for Nike -- it's proof of his absolute greatness, which would go on to transcend basketball and make
him an internationally known figure. By the end of the film, "Air" has made the case, and it's done
despite barely showing Michael on screen.
In the final meeting that helps Nike secure the deal with Michael Jordan, executives set
out to show a video that will hopefully dazzle their prospective signee, but Sonny interrupts
it. Instead of showing a highlight reel of Jordan himself and how he could work at Nike,
Sonny launches into an extended monologue about Jordan as a player, and his future as a star.
As Sonny tells Jordan that he's about to experience the highest highs of any athlete ever,
as well as the lowest lows, we see a montage of all of those highs and lows playing out. The film
shows us Jordan's NBA heights, his tabloid headlines, the death of his father, and even
his short-lived baseball career before his NBA comeback. We see all of that while Sonny talks,
laying out not just Michael's potential, but his path as a singular figure in American sports.
It's a vital moment in the film, because it underscores that we, the audience,
already know Michael Jordan's future. We've known it from the beginning. The film,
therefore, is not just about a shoe deal. It's about a consequential moment that
took shape at a key point in time, and changed the world in demonstrable ways
that we can still see.
The NBA had stars before Michael Jordan, of course. But "Air" points out that,
through his early merchandising moves, Jordan had the potential to become a bigger star than
anyone before him, and in the process change the face of the NBA forever.
By building a line centered on Jordan, complete with commercials and even a logo that reflected
his high-flying likeness, Nike put a spotlight on an NBA star in ways no other shoe company
ever had. He became the centerpiece of an entire cultural moment, which he was able to back up
with major achievements on the basketball court. Because of that, the popularity of the NBA rose,
but something else also happened. The nature of Jordan's deal -- and the revenue stream
it created -- meant that future superstars could follow in his footsteps, making the NBA a league
of players more than a league of teams.
Before setting out to make "Air," Ben Affleck reached out to Michael Jordan
himself to ask for guidance. It was important to Affleck, he told The Hollywood Reporter,
that the film be something that Jordan wouldn't object to, and he
wanted the legend's advice on how to proceed. According to Affleck, Jordan emphasized the
importance of athlete relations representative Howard White in making the deal at Nike,
giving Chris Tucker more leeway to emphasize the character in the film.
"It don't matter about what Phil is thinking, or anybody is thinking.
All that matters is, how much do you believe?" Most importantly, Jordan emphasized just how
crucial his mother was in the process, and even requested that Viola Davis be the one to play her.
At the time, Deloris was not a major player in the script,
which left Affleck with an important decision. The director decided to reframe the narrative,
making "Air" much more about the Jordan family and Deloris in particular, securing Davis for
the role as Jordan requested. It was a decision that changed the entire shape of the narrative,
particularly the ending, as Deloris becomes the one who advocates for her son's unprecedented
deal. Without that input from Jordan, "Air" would not have been the same movie it turned out to be.