Nike's best foot forward: How Sonny Vaccaro changed the game forever

The movie Air ensured Sonny Vaccaro would forever be known for the Jordan-Nike signing, but his autobiography makes clear it didn't define him

Sonny Vaccaro is famous as the guy who signed Michael Jordan at Nike. But, as Mr Vaccaro writes, it would be more accurate to say that he was the guy who bet his job to get Nike to sign on Michael Jordan. Mr Vaccaro had seen a sublime, last moment shot by Jordan and knew a future great when he saw one. However, signing on Jordan for Nike was anything but easy. It meant hard-selling Jordan to Nike and Nike to Jordan. Jordan preferred Adidas and told Vaccaro that if that company came anywhere close in terms of offer to anything that Nike was offering, he would go with them. Selling Jordan to Nike was almost as tough — half of Nike’s top management was not convinced that it should use the company’s entire marketing budget on a single player. After all, they preferred to hedge their bets with endorsements from various players. To make things more complicated, Nike was having a bad year. It had missed the Women’s Aerobics rage, on which Reebok had capitalised. It was a monumental job of persuasion, but it would go on to make billions for both Nike and Jordan.

 

Though Mr Vaccaro would forever be known by the Jordan/Nike signing, his autobiography makes it clear that it was not what defined him. Certainly, the son of Italian immigrants to the US had an eventful life. He was, in his own words, “a hyperkinetic bundle of spring-loaded energy”. He was athletically inclined and won a football scholarship to attend college, becoming the first in his family to go beyond school. He could have become a professional football player but back and other injuries in college ended that dream quickly. The young Sonny always had a penchant for making friends and influencing people — one reason he did not lose his scholarship. Dom Roselli, an assistant coach, instead offered to let him keep his scholarship in lieu of helping with recruitments of promising basketball players.

 

Basketball would go on to define and shape Mr Vaccaro’s life. Always a great organiser and dealmaker, he would initially put together a high school all-star basketball game and later a basketball game camp that  would attract the best school players and would search a talent recruitment camp for coaches.

 

His association with Nike started when the company was still small and largely known for athletic shoes. Converse and Adidas were the giants in the shoe game. Nike was trying to get noticed in basketball by getting some NBA players to endorse its brand. It did not have much success, according to Mr Vaccaro. He had gone with a few special shoe designs made by a friend to see if Nike would be interested in producing and marketing them. While Nike did not use any of the shoe designs, it asked him to help them do better in basketball. Mr Vaccaro gave them the idea of hiring high school coaches and giving them free shoes for players. It would be a great move and make Nike a better known name in basketball. Mr Vaccaro would eventually get hired by Nike and the Michael Jordan deal came about later. But the Nike association would not last — Phil Knight soured on Mr Vaccaro and fired him unceremoniously. Mr Vaccaro thinks his sacking may be because Mr Knight could not tolerate him becoming known as the face of Nike. Mr Knight was reticent and avoided the limelight, but he also did not want anyone to overshadow him in Nike, according to Mr Vaccaro.

 

Mr Vaccaro was then hired by Adidas, and got them to sign Kobe Bryant, among others. But he could not get another future superstar LeBron James as Adidas reduced the offer at the last moment. LeBron James was signed up promptly by Nike. Mr Vaccaro went to work for Reebok too but obviously his peak was signing Jordan and Bryant. A movie called Air, featuring Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Ben Affleck as Phil Knight, about the Jordan-Nike story would make Vaccaro a household name.

 

Later in life, he would take on the NCAA, the basketball association, pointing out that while it profited from basketball players, the latter hardly got any benefits. It would go to court and the NCAA would finally lose.

 

Mr Vaccaro’s book is well written. His co-author Armen Keteyian is a well-regarded sports journalist and author and may be the reason the book is a breezy read.

 

As always, there may be other versions of the events. Mr Knight, Mr Vaccaro’s former employer, gave an interview minimising the latter’s role in the Jordan signing. However, the Vaccaro story seems to carry a lot of weight.

 

It is an interesting book and gives a fair idea about not just basketball but the way US schools and colleges treat sports and why good players in baseball, basketball and American football can get college scholarships and make big money.

 

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The reviewer is former editor of Business Today and Businessworld and founder of Prosaic View, an editorial consultancy