Air Jordan trainers are now so highly prized that rare ones can fetch more than $1 million and shoppers have rioted over the release of new designs. But when Nike first tried to sign up basketball rookie Michael Jordan in 1984, the Adidas-loving player didn’t want anything to do with the firm.

The company was seen as an uncool jogging brand, while its co-founder was considering selling up following a round of job lay-offs.

Not that Jordan, 60 — widely considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time — was everyone’s first pick either.

He was only rated the third best choice among the young college players ready to be offered professional contracts.

Now new movie Air, by Ben Affleck, and starring his old pal Matt Damon, tells the story of the man who brought Nike and Jordan together in the biggest sports marketing deal of all time.

Michael Jordan’s iconic dunk during the 1988 NBA All Star Slam Dunk Competition. Picture: Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images
Nike’s global revenue in 2022 was almost $70 billion, almost double the amount of its nearest rival Adidas, with $7.5 billion of that due to Air Jordans.

But the success probably wouldn’t have happened without little-known marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, who once declared: “I am the saviour of Nike.”

The other key player was Jordan’s business-savvy mum Deloris, 81, who persuaded her son to forget Adidas in return for a contract that gave him a 25 per cent share of the profits from the trainers named after him.

No sportsman had signed a deal like that before, and here was a player yet to be picked for a top-level game.

(L-R) Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley relax beside the pool between takes during filming of Nike advertisement.
Air director Affleck says: “Even before he stepped on an NBA court Michael completely transformed the world of sports marketing and how athletes are compensated, championed by his mother, who envisioned his future and knew his worth.” Right from the start Michael Jordan was underestimated.

At 15 he was considered too short at 5ft 10in for his high school basketball team.

Yet in a year he shot up by four inches and was soon being pursued by US colleges for their sides.

Even when he scored the winning shot for the University of North Carolina in the national championship final in 1982, some fans considered it to be a lucky one.

One man who believed otherwise was Vaccaro, who worked at Nike from 1977 to 1991.

The former PE teacher, who once admitted betting $1,500 a day on sport, was willing to gamble all of Nike’s basketball marketing budget on Jordan.

Matt Damon in Air. Picture: Ana Carballosa
Vaccaro, now 83, was a controversial figure in the game because he paid college coaches to kit their players out in Nike trainers.

In Air, which opens in cinemas on Wednesday next week, Nike’s founder Phil Knight, played by Affleck, is depicted as not wanting to pay $370,000 a year to secure Jordan’s signature.

And the rest of the Nike team think that Vaccaro (Damon) has no chance of persuading the highly rated young prodigy to put a pen to their contract.

On court Jordan wore Converse trainers, which were then the predominant basketball brand, and off it he slipped on Adidas clothes.

It would be another four years before Nike dreamt up its now iconic Just Do It slogan.

Damon says: “I always had this idea of Nike as this absolute powerhouse in the basketball shoe market, which they are now.

This pair of Nike Air Jordan 1, worn by basketball superstar Michael Jordan, sold for $1 million at Christie’s New York auction house. Picture: AFP
“But when you catch them at the beginning of this story, they are the clear underdogs.”

Times were so tough at Nike that Knight was thinking of canning its basketball department.

He once wrote that “Orwell was right — 1984 was a tough year”, and told Fortune business magazine that he had thought about selling his creation.

The day before he was due to fly to his meeting with Nike the then 21-year-old told his parents that he didn’t want to go.

It was his mum Deloris who changed his mind.

At the meeting Jordan’s main demand was a new sporty red Mercedes.

Vaccaro rolled two toy cars towards the young player and told him: “With the money you’re going to make, you can buy lots of cars.”

Deloris wanted to extract an even higher price from Nike.

She told them her son would only sign the deal if he received a cut of any future sales.

It was a move that has gone unsung until now.

Deloris didn’t feature in an early script of the film but then Jordan told Affleck: “None of this would have happened without my mother.”

He also asked that Oscar-winner Viola Davis play her.

She says: “When I heard that she actually brokered the deal that got him a percentage in that Nike contract, my first thought was, ‘Who is this woman whose mind was so progressive that she even thought of demanding something that had never been given to a player before?’.”

Air Jordan turned around the fortunes of Nike. Picture: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Nike also promised to pay the $8,000-a-game fine the National Basketball Association would impose on Jordan for wearing trainers that were not white enough.

The brand wanted his Air Jordans to be black and red, even though that contravened regulations.

Jordan also reportedly didn’t like what appeared to be the “devil’s colour”.

It was a huge deal for a player who was signing for the Chicago Bulls, a team whose owners were thinking about selling due to dwindling attendances.

Jordan went on to win six championships, five most valuable player awards and score 32,292 points, putting him fifth on the all-time list.

When Air Jordans were launched in 1985, in a $12 million marketing campaign, they shifted more than $185 million-worth in their first year.

Affleck says: “I had a picture of my little brother wearing Air Jordans. It was the winter of 1985 or early ’86.”

Michael Jordan (R) with fellow Nike athlete Tiger Woods (L) is famous for betting big sums on the golf course.
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“I remember quite clearly when Nike replaced what was popular then, which was mostly Adidas.

“And I remember how, seemingly overnight, Nike became what you had to have if you wanted to be cool.”

Even Vaccaro was surprised that they made such an impact.

He says: “No one in the world could have imagined what the Air Jordan would become.

“Even I never believed that would happen, because no one had ever done what Nike did.”

Since then many people have taken credit for the phenomenon.

The trainer’s designer, Peter Moore, who died last year, and Jordan’s agent David Falk claimed to have come up with the Air Jordan name.

Either way, Jordan was certainly right to listen to his mum.

Now 60, is said to still earn more than $500 million a year from his rights to the brand.

But with fame and fortune, he has also had his share of heartache.

His dad James Jordan, who is played by Viola’s husband Julius Tennon in the film, was shot dead in 1993 by 18-year-old Daniel Green in what was reported at the time as a carjacking.

The 56-year-old had been asleep in a red Lexus his son had recently bought for him and which attracted the attention of Green and his accomplice Larry Demery.

The pair dumped the body in a swamp.

They were later sentenced to life in prison.

Michael Jordan earns around $500 million per year from the brand. Nike, Inc.
Even though he is worth a reported $3.1 billion, Jordan has not always been good at holding on to his money.

He has bet six-figure sums, mainly on golf, but denied having a gambling problem.

He also had to pay $250 million to first wife Juanita Vanoy in a divorce settlement in 2006.

A private investigator claimed Juanita had found out about him cheating on her with other women.

Surprisingly, Jordan, who remarried in 2013, appears only fleetingly in the movie.

The audience sees the back of his head and hears his voice once.

Affleck says: “The only person who could play Michael Jordan, as I’ve said to him, is too old now to play Michael Jordan.” That, of course, is Jordan himself.”

Neither the former athlete nor Nike had any say over the final script for the film, which Variety magazine has described as “2023’s first slam dunk awards contender”.

The period the movie covers was a game-changer for Nike — and its rivals.

In 2003 Nike bought a bankrupt Converse for $470 million and Adidas has struggled to keep up with the swoosh ever since.

But for Affleck, his movie is all about Jordan.

He says: “If it’s about anything, it’s about what Michael Jordan meant to the sporting world, to the world at large.