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8th Annual Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational Golf Tournament at The One & Only Ocean Club

Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty

Thanks to ESPN’s The Last Dance, we’ve learned a lot about Michael Jordan and the supporting Chicago Bulls characters that led to the franchise’s six championships.

Now, we’re learning that Scottie Pippen may not have been the only questionable contract signed by a 90s Bull. Following episodes seven and eight, Jordan’s agent David Falk spoke to The Herd with Colin Cowherd about the details of his first deal with Nike. The first deal was worth $250,000, but Falk revealed what that figure really meant for each party involved.

“The irony of the Air Jordan deal, it’s probably the best deal I’ve ever made, and it’s probably the worst deal I’ve ever made because no one had a clue—including Nike—that you could sell $100 million worth of shoes for a rookie in his first year.”

It turns out, Nike greatly underestimated Jordan’s future influence on the league; at the time, they didn’t think he could sell that many shoes. But as we all know now, he did– and then some.

Falk revealed in The Last Dance, that upon signing Jordan in 1984, they expected him to sell $3 million worth of shoes by the end of the fourth year. But as it turns out, he sold $126 million in just one year. While Falk is obviously happy the deal happened, he admitted to not being sure of how it’d turn out. But one confident person was Dolores Jordan, Michael’s mother, who forced him to take a meeting with Nike after he was still so set on signing with adidas.

“My mother said, ‘You’re going to go listen. You may not like it, but you’re gonna go listen,” Jordan revealed in episode five. “And she made me get on that plane and go listen. I go into that meeting, not wanting to be there. Nike made this big pitch, and my father said, ‘You have to be a fool not to take this deal. It’s a great deal.’”

As you already know, Mom is (almost) always right.

Michael Jordan’s Agent Explains Why His Nike Deal Was The Worst (and Best) Ever Signed  was originally published on cassiuslife.com