JORDAN PLAYED HARD TO GET

IN REVIEW

NIKE BASKETBALL FLOUNDERED A BIT UNTIL COMING UP FOR AIR

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

New York baseball has Derek Jeter, Chicago has Oprah and Obama and Nike basketball has Michael Jordan.

Director Ben Affleck provides the back story to how the sports shoe and apparel company signed the greatest basketball player in world history in the Amazon original film, Air (2023).

Affleck teams up with his buddy, Matt Damon, in a directing acting role for this biopic behind the scenes look at a moment in sports history.

Affleck plays Nike Chief Executive Officer and founder, Phil Knight, while Damon plays the lead role as Nike basketball guru, Sonny Vaccaro.

Nike has become known for the running shoe and as one of the founders of the marathon craze during the 1970s, but the shoe manufacturer has nothing in the way of basketball shoes, so much so that the up and coming basketball stars want nothing to do with the company label.

Damon does a good job acting here showing how the basketball department was floundering through a combination of corporate push back and his own kind of personal neglect, including gambling on basketball games in Las Vegas.

Vaccaro had been building the Nike basketball department from the ground up by working with high school basketball leagues to develop talent for the college circuit and the professional NBA with the company brand ever present.

But Knight begins to get impatient as the 1984 NBA draft approaches without a clear star lined up for Nike endorsements.

Vaccaro is told to go out and earn his paycheck before the rival sports shoe manufacturers shut them out of another year of basketball merchandising.

The task is almost monumental after Jordan’s agent tells Vaccaro that Jordan is so against being branded by Nike that he won’t even agree to a meeting.

Viola Davis plays the runner of the household in black American families, the mother, Deloris Jordan. Deloris clearly understands the big picture and the overall potential of her son.

But nothing doing, and Nike cannot get past a phone call with Jordan’s agent.

Affleck reinvents the 1980s by using the distinct pop songs of the era as the soundtrack as well as the props and costumes of the decade. The script and the actors are true to the distinct genre of a generation to the point that everything seems a bit corny and out of sink. But Affleck stays away just shy of a parody.

Rob Strasser is a bit weary of all the shenanigans as head of the basketball department at Nike, especially with the dearth of ideas coming from the  idea people in his charge. Jason Bateman revisits his role as an organizer organizing a lot of people below him while someone ominously more  important above him is calling the shots.

The secret is out that Nike eventually does sign Jordan, but the whole process starts with Vaccaro breaking the rules of the trade by bypassing the agent and visiting the Jordan family in North Carolina. Jordan has already been signed to the Chicago Bulls, and Deloris has enough experiencing dealing with scouts and endorsements to carry a heavy skepticism about her, even with the unannounced visit to her home by Nike basketball.

Affleck keeps the narrative fairly linear and the camera shots in line with the popular culture of the eighties. The overall vision is to keep focus on the backstory to such an extent as to not even cast Jordan as an instrumental part of the script.

Everything is kept simple and straightforward to mimic the gritty reality of having to keep the corporate backrooms turning.

The message being that Nike signing Jordan and Deloris’s negotiation strategy may have changed the face of sports history, if not also helped American and world culture out of the funk developed during the hippie generation.

Air is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.