Warning: Spoilers ahead for the true story of Air.
Ben Affleck's latest directorial outing Air tells the story of the game behind the game, the sneaker game. Specifically, the basketball shoe division of Nike in the 80s, which was on its last legs until an unlikely deal with a young upstart Michael Jordan flipped them into the iconic brand we know today.
With Air, Tetris and Flamin' Hot, the biopic boom has made way for a slew of feel-good capitalism porn
At the heart of this new biopic isn't Jordan, so much so that he's not even shown on screen apart from some Cartoon Network-style obscuring of his face from shots. No, this story is about the men behind the deal – Affleck as Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, the gung-ho marketing executive at the heart of the signing, Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser, the Vice President of Marketing at Nike, Chris Tucker as Howard White, the Vice President of the Jordan brand and Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, the designer of the Air Jordan. Outside of Nike is a supporting cast made up of real-life couple Viola Davis and Julius Tennon as Michael Jordan's parents, Chris Messina as his agent David Falk and Marlon Wayans as the basketball coach George Ravelling. This ensemble of execs and suits, per the film's reading of events, ushered in a multi-million dollar deal thanks to an altruistic belief in one thing: that Michael Jordan would make history and all of them a lot of money.
That part, obviously, is true. Michael Jordan is considered one of the greatest athletes of all time and his involvement with Nike helped them turn billions in profits. The rest of Air isn't as true to life, however, such is often the case with biopics compounding months of boring mundanity into 120 minutes and, in the case of Air, laborious contracts given the kind of a championship-winning buzzer-beater.
Here's what's true and what's not in Air.
How important was Sonny Vaccaro?
The lead of this film is unquestionably Damon's Sonny Vaccaro, a marketing executive tasked with finding up-and-coming college players to act as representatives for Nike's flopping basketball division. That is until he has a light bulb idea to bet all their budget on Michael Jordan, a player on the cusp of becoming a superstar. With his determination steering the ship, he convinces Jordan's parents to give Nike a shot to pitch themselves as his official partner despite the fact Adidas and Converse were his top choices. Considering Air Jordans now dominate the world, you can guess how it ends.
According to Air, Vaccaro was the instrumental figure in the Air Jordan deal, spearheading the entire pitch and delivering a truly orchestral music-sweeping style speech at the end to secure the bag. But his involvement may not have been as prominent as the film suggests. In an interview with USA Today in 2015, former chair Knight said “A lot of people want to take credit for signing Michael Jordan, most obviously Sonny Vaccaro. On ESPN he said he was the key to the thing. Sonny helped, but he wasn’t the MVP in that process." Certainly, it seems like Jordan feels the same way, especially considering Vaccaro was noticeably omitted from his Netflix series The Last Dance. He later said “Sonny likes to take the credit. But it really wasn’t Sonny, it was actually George Raveling. George Raveling was with me on the 1984 Olympics team. He used to always try to talk to me, ‘You gotta go Nike, you gotta go Nike. You’ve got to try.'"
According to records of the events, Raveling, played by Wayans in the film, helped secure a meeting with Jordan early on in the process, so likely Vaccaro still had a great impact on the deal by virtue of his connection with Raveling. However, when it came to the final pitch, Jordan said Strasser, played rather meekly by Bateman, was the head honcho.
Vaccaro left Nike in 1991 after being fired under circumstances that are still kept under wraps. In interviews later, he fought his corner. “Phil Knight’s lying, Michael’s lying more than Phil and Raveling is insane. All three of them need to destroy me to live happily ever after." He then went on to work at Adidas with Strasser and Moore, who'd also left Nike. “It’s illogical to think it was anything other than all me”, he added, saying “Nobody else really wanted (Jordan), and they didn’t know he was going (to the NBA) I just had a hunch." Certainly, Strasser and Moore remained on Sonny's side following their departure from the company to rival Adidas, and Air seems to want to stick closer to their version of events.
Did Michael Jordan's parents really convince him to sign with Nike?
Michael Jordan's parents were instrumental in his early success, with his mother, Deloris, acting as his negotiator in most of his deals. Affleck said, in talking to Jordan about the movie, that it was made clear they had to flesh out the role with Viola Davis taking the part.
While it's true that Deloris acted as the main talking head, alongside agent David Falk, in the Air Jordan deal, the film implies this decision was made after Vaccaro made an impromptu visit to their home to give an impassioned plea to her motherly instincts and convince her that Nike is the only brand who really care about Jordan as a person. While Vaccaro claims this did take place at some point, in real life, the pair never met in North Carolina and Vaccaro actually managed to get a meeting with Michael after a basketball game with the help of Ravelling.
So who is telling the truth?
In all likelihood, everyone is telling some version of their truth. As is difficult with telling inspirational stories through the lens of business, someone has to be the altruistic leader while others either need convincing or need to be naysayers left behind to fume over their hubris. In Air, Vaccaro leads the fold of Stasser, Knight, Moore and White, while agent David Falk (Chris Messina) is comedically left swearing into his phone over being usurped in the negotiations.
As Knight has since said, “The signing of Michael Jordan, yeah, success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan." The Nike deal is a case of multiple men vying for their egos to be satiated and their pockets to be lined, so it's impossible to know whose version of events is most sincere. Ultimately, no deal would have made it to silver screen biopic territory without the success of Michael Jordan, Air Jordan himself, the only person instrumental in securing Nike that billion-dollar bag.
