Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player to ever play in the NBA. He’s also arguably the most popular basketball player the world has ever seen.
- Jordan Earns His Wings
- The Jumpman Is Born
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With six championships, six Finals MVPs, five MVPs, 10 scoring titles, and a Defensive Player of the Year Award, it’s easy to see why Jordan became the superstar we all know him as today. There was something about the way he played the game that owed fans, but it didn’t stop there; his popularity reached other areas, including fashion.
On top of Jordan himself being well known across the globe, his Jordan brand shoe and clothing line from Nike is extremely popular. The logo for the Jordan Brand is also well known, as anyone who looks at it knows the name of the player behind the logo.
Yes, who doesn’t love the silhouette logo of Michael Jordan, known simply as “Jumpman”? This logo is one that inspires young kids to play like their Chicago Bulls hero. But did you know the Jumpman was not the original Jordan logo?
Jordan Earns His Wings
Michael Jordan was a college basketball champion, the 1982 ACC Rookie of the Year winner, and the 1984 ACC Player of the Year in college, just to name a few of his accomplishments.
When Jordan was starting his rookie campaign in the NBA for the Chicago Bulls, a few shoe companies were looking to sign him. Jordan wore Converse in college, so he liked them. His favorite shoe, though, was actually Adidas. If Jordan had his choice, he would’ve been wearing Adidas shoes.
“I never wore Nike shoes until I signed a Nike contract. All through college I wore Converse, and up to that point, my favorite show was Adidas shoes,” Jordan said in an interview. “At the time that everybody was starting recruiting me about what shoes to wear, I was pro Adidas, you know the whole time. Then, once I went through the presentation with Nike, you know they really made a great effort of trying to, you know, have my input on the shoes, design any shoes that I wanted to wear. But then I was very loyal, I went back to Adidas, to the Adidas contact that I had and say, ‘look, you know this is the Nike contract, if you come anywhere close, you know, I’ll sign with you guys’.”
Adidas would not come anywhere close to Nike’s contract, and history was made as Jordan not only signed with Nike, but this partnership would become the biggest shoe deal in sports history.
The first Nike shoes that were made for Jordan didn’t have the iconic logo we all know and love today. Instead, the logo had a basketball in the middle with wings around it. On top, on a banner, it said ‘Air Jordan’.
"It represents flight."
How the "Wings" logo, which debuted on the Air Jordan I, was born: https://t.co/mCHu85b0B6 pic.twitter.com/Alnt0emKrh
— SLAM (@SLAMonline) November 20, 2018
This logo looks fresh. It’s definitely a nice logo, but this logo wouldn’t last, and that’s a good thing. The logo that would replace it would surely be more iconic, but the question now is, ‘how did the Jumpman logo come about?’.
The Jumpman Is Born
The Jumpman logo for the Jordan brand is as iconic as any logo there is on the planet. Once you see the logo, you immediately know it’s Michael Jordan. As a young player, Jordan would soar through the air as he’d land a monstrous dunk over his opponent.
Many think the famous Jumpman logo was a photograph taken of Jordan as he went up for one of those iconic slam dunks. This, actually, is false. The logo was indeed inspired by a photograph, yet, not only did it not take place during a game but it was also taken before Jordan ever played an NBA game and even before he ever signed with Nike.
Before Jordan was drafted into the NBA, he played for Team USA in the 1984 Olympic Games, which were held in Los Angeles. Before the games, fellow North Carolina student, Jacobus Rentmeester, wanted to take some photographs of athletes who would be participating in the Olympics.
Rentmeester would take a photo of Jordan with his legs spread and his left hand extended with the ball. Jordan would wear his Olympic jumpsuit in the photo and, surprisingly, a pair of New Balance basketball shoes. The position Jordan made in the photo was certainly not a normal basketball move, but for the photograph, it was amazing.
The photo would go on to appear in Life magazine, but this wouldn’t be the end of the photo. When Nike signed Jordan, they decided they wanted to update the Jordan wings logo, and they used Rentmeester’s photo as inspiration.
Nike now had their own photographer take a picture that resembled Rentmeester’s photo, though Jordan looked slightly different in the picture. Jordan, of course, not only wore a Nike suit, but he also wore his Nike Jordan shoes.
