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00:00one day in 1984 there was a meeting at Nike run by Rob Strausser who was second-in-command
00:11and Phil Knight obviously was the boss. Nike had become somewhat successful when we introduced
00:18the colleges and the college players to wearing the shoe. Now this meeting was called for this
00:26prison. Strausser opens it up. We're doing something different. We're going to sign players to a record
00:35contract and we're going to do marketing with them. I was invited to this meeting. They brought
00:43me in because I had the number one all-star game at that time for round ball classic. It was the first
00:49nationalized game in the country and those players would eventually be pros. So I had a good feel
00:55for that world. Today live from the Felt Forum in New York City, the USA Network presents the 1984
01:04NBA college draft. The draft was in 84, one of the greatest NBA drafts ever. O'Keeam Olajuwon,
01:14Charles Barkley, Sam Bowie was a kid and he was going to be drafted by the Portland Trailblazers.
01:20I mean, just go through the draft. That was one of the most seminal years in sports history and
01:27especially for the Nike company. The Chicago Bulls picked Michael Jordan of the University of North
01:36Carolina. They went around the room and they asked everybody, well, we have $500,000 to spend.
01:44Who would you pick? And I say, you're doing it wrong. What do you mean, son? Well, if you're going
01:52to do it, give it to the kid. Well, what do you mean, what kid? The kid from North Carolina. Give it to
01:57Jordan. Just give all the money to Jordan. This will be far-fetched for anybody listening, but it's
02:05so far-fetched it'd be ridiculous to even say unless you totally believe this to be true.
02:10I didn't know Dean Smith from Dean Jones, okay? There was nothing there other than I saw the
02:17Georgetown game.
02:25He was not a Nike school. They were a converse school. And I said something to the effect,
02:36if you don't get him, in my opinion, you'll never be able to get another kid like this
02:41because you won't have the money at him. There was only one choice for me, and the choice
02:48was Jordan. Never met Michael in my life until after that, when I met him with Tony Wilms.
02:54No one else from Nike went there. No one. I was just told to get him. Michael Jordan walked
03:07into that thing, was very polite with me, very nice, very cordial. And we got to a point
03:12where he did say to me, Adidas is my pick. Even if you offer me more than them, they're the
03:20favorite. I wasn't really prepared for that. Any other course that we go through in life,
03:30there's always something there that turns the tide for you.
03:37I knew they were making a special shoe. And I said, we're going to make a shoe for you
03:43and advertise you. We're going to market you. The day in Tony Romo's history changed.
03:53What I said to him at that meeting, it changed that industry. I don't know anything about
04:00shoes, and I still don't. But when I found out, I started to understand what marketing was,
04:06commercializing the athlete.
04:36I grew up in Southeast DC. And I was one of these people that was always able to interpret
04:52for my friends and my neighborhood and my community in Southeast, what was happening in the business
04:57world. So basically, what was going on in the boardroom, I could bring back to the corner. And
05:03then the things that were happening out in the corner, I could interpret and distribute and bring
05:07that stuff into the boardroom. I always felt like my superpower was kind of like being that bridge
05:15between the two worlds. Everyone used to call Reebok at that time, especially in the basketball category,
05:23like we were the challenger brand.
05:25Wow, what a matchup this is going to be.
05:27Being able to walk around and operate as a challenger brand and trying to always prove that,
05:32you know, you can sell product, that you can perform at the level of the best,
05:37having that chip on your shoulder, it was everything.
05:42And so now I'm in Reebok, and I have a full year under my belt of working on the basketball
05:46business now. And I'm realizing like, what makes a really good endorser of a category like basketball?
05:53There were a couple of insights that became reality.
05:58Well, you got to have someone who kind of has the ball in their hand.
06:01They can control the game.
06:05Number two was they need to be good looking. They need to be someone that guys want to be
06:11and girls want to be with. Number three was kids will find inspiration in who they are.
06:17You could look at him and say, wow, if he can do it, I can do it. They needed to be relatable.
06:22Kids couldn't aspire to be seven feet, 300 pounds. Shoot, under 60? That's relatable.
06:29That's somebody like any kid in the world can aspire to be. Not realizing a guy like Allen Iverson
06:34was blessed with all his God-given, too much God-given talent and athleticism in that way.
06:38Coming out of high school in Virginia, he was the number one football player in the state of Virginia
06:47and the number one basketball player in the state of Virginia. And he was a state champion in both sports.
06:52That is rare. Rare, rare, rare, rare, rare, rare.
06:59Him going into his final year, I really didn't think we had a real shot at him.
07:05Because honestly, up until that point, he was a Nike kid.
07:12I used to talk to my teammates in Georgetown. They used to ask me, man, do you think you
07:17gonna have your own shoe and all that? And I'm like, I don't know.
07:19You know, hopefully, something like that will happen for me, but it was so far-fetched.
07:27I don't think nothing like that would actually come true to where I had my own sneakers.
07:38There was another gentleman at the time, a young guy who was working in product development by the
07:42name of Todd Krinsky. Todd and I just started clicking up like, look, man, we gotta figure out
07:46how we gonna get AI. And it just so happened that Todd agreed that AI
07:49was the guy.
07:52I was actually an associate development manager working on like the tennis business at the time.
07:57But my passion was in basketball. I was playing ball at lunch every day, meeting all the basketball
08:01guys. And that's when I kind of met Q. And so our whole thing was instead of just going to the
08:06executives with Allen Iverson, we went to the executives and said, yo, it's Allen Iverson.
08:09And we've created a shoe. We created all this kind of passion.
08:12Will we get the company to support us? Should we even be spending our time thinking about this guy?
08:19Can we get it done? And that's why we called the shoe the question. Like we knew his nickname was the
08:25answer, but we called it the question because there were just so many questions. No one gave us
08:31permission to do this. Like we just did it.
08:38There weren't a lot of people that were excited about this, especially retailers.
08:42Retailers. I mean, I knew these guys at the time and they were kind of like, yeah, you know, he's six
08:46foot candidly shoot. He had all this trouble. I mean, it wasn't like he was the slam dunk that he
08:51was going to be the guy. So people did not want to take a strong position on the product.
08:58For a lot of the buyers for a lot of these top doors, they were like
09:02white older males. Like they're in their forties, right? You know, they're all wearing khakis and
09:06buttons up every day to work. So I'm not really trusting their opinion on what looks flat.
09:11And so we're showing this product internally and everyone is laughing at us.
09:18So I started taking this out to playgrounds up and down the East Coast to show it to kids.
09:26So I started in Boston, I go to Rhode Island, I go to New York, I go to Jersey, I go to Baltimore,
09:32I go to DC, and maybe I took a trip to Atlanta or something. But for the most part, I'm up and down
09:37I'm 95. Because I'm also a hooper still. So I'm still going around playing at all these
09:42playgrounds. I've been going to my trunk, showing them product afterwards. I'm showing it to the
09:46older players. I'm showing it to the younger players. And everybody in the streets, they
09:51feeling the vision. And then they're going crazy over the product on its own. I'm never presenting the
09:58product as Allen Iverson's product because we don't even have him signed. I don't even know if we're
10:02going to get him. There was also all these things against us. Like, you know, his mentor,
10:07John Thompson was on the board of directors at Nike. And we were talking at the time, but the money
10:12was getting really high. He was like, yo, there's going to be a boardroom meeting on Iverson, we're
10:17going. Neither of us had any right to be talking about a multi-million dollar long-term deal with
10:21an athlete. Neither of us had that juice at the time. But we were like so passionate about it.
10:27And then eventually, Paul Farmer gets brought in. We started to share the reports of what we were
10:32doing with the kids and showing them some of that feedback. But these old white buyers, they're not
10:39getting the story. They're not seeing it. At one point, Paul said, this thing's getting really high.
10:46I really feel like, and he paused and he said, there'll be another Allen Iverson.
10:50Paul, now that'll be something like, wait, what? We both hit the table like, no, Paul, no,
10:58there won't. There will never be another Allen Iverson. Trust us.
11:02I think one of the smartest things in the beginning that Allen did was that he had David Falk as his
11:12agent. Joining me now is David Falk, Michael's long-time agent and manager. David was a super
11:20agent. And I know this is recorded, and I'm sorry, David, for saying it, because I know you're a great
11:25guy and I love you to death. But back then, I would argue that David Falk's ego was bigger than Allen.
11:33And there was a time when he was definitely, you could argue, the most powerful man
11:37in basketball, for sure. You know, with having Mike and AI at the same time.
11:42While he was pro-Nike, for sure, at times, he definitely was more pro-David. And it's really
11:48about showing Allen that we get him and that we connect with him. We don't want you to be the next
11:53Michael Jordan. We're going to let you be you. I mean, that's basically the crux of our pitch.
12:01And I think David understood that if he had a top guy at Nike and a top guy at Reebok, he had real power.
12:14When I first met Allen and he walked in, I remember like the aura he had. And I was like,
12:19this guy is ready for everything that's coming out of him. And Allen was really,
12:23really ready for it. We go through our storytelling, the vision for our business,
12:28all the boring stuff up front. Allen was just sitting there in a cool AI fashion,
12:33just taking it all in, playing poker, not really giving us nothing. And then Todd and I look at each
12:38other like, yo, we got to get the shoe on the table. We really got to put the shoe on the table,
12:41because that's what he really wants to see, right? So we kind of saved that towards the end.
12:46And then it was like, okay, any questions? And they were like, no, no question. We're like,
12:50well, we got a question.
12:55I remember seeing the shoe and it didn't really matter what it looked like.
13:02It didn't even matter. You know, just the fact of it being my shoe was enough for me.
13:08But then seeing the shoe made it that much better. I couldn't wait to put him on.
13:17I think he was super impressed that we had a product for him. When he went and met with Nike,
13:22they didn't. And then honestly, it came down to money. It wasn't like we got Allen for the cheap.
13:28Like we had to pay a lot of money to get him. Allen was a $50 million investment that the brand was
13:33making at the time. At Nike, Jordan had Howard White, who everyone had known had been like his
13:39confidant and kind of helped shepherd him through the process. They wanted me to kind of work in a
13:44similar capacity. And then that's when Paul and others volunteered like, and Q's going to be your
13:50day-to-day contact, your point person. With the first pick in the 1996 NBA draft, the Philadelphia
13:5976ers select Allen Iverson from Georgetown University. I was just happy to have my own shoe.
14:08That was my dream. That was my biggest, one of my biggest dreams, obviously to make it
14:12to the NBA. But to have my own signature shoe, that's icing on the cake. Just a dream come true.
14:22It was just an incredible feeling. All right, Allen, congratulations. Hubie Brown says there's
14:26nobody in the league quicker than you. Is there anybody that can stop you one-on-one? No, I hope not.
14:33I don't think so. You've pretty well been able to do whatever you want on the court in high school
14:37and encounter. All the campaigns with Allen where they were very unscripted. Maybe we would have
14:43an idea or maybe we wouldn't. We were very kind of flexible with being an authentic brand and wanting
14:47him to really just express who he was. I want everybody to know I play every game like it's my
14:54last. It seemed like just yesterday I was talking with my friends about one day making it to the NBA.
15:01Everything was freestyle. Everything was authentic. It was all original. That was the genius of Reebok.
15:12The guys that came in with me, the guys that were my age, you know, they all thought it was cool.
15:17You know what I mean? The fact that I had my own shoe. The older guys, you know how older guys are,
15:23when it comes to young guys, a lot of guys had contracts with different shoe companies, but
15:30didn't have a signature shoe. I kind of specked my chest out a little bit.
15:37Felt a little different.
15:42We were in Philly a lot. We were watching every game we could.
15:46He had the most aspirational, but somewhat relatable game. He wasn't freakish in terms of
15:52stature or size, but he was fearless. It was very difficult to stop him.
16:00Allen was always going to be taken care of in terms of being able to have product to go on court.
16:04What we were struggling with was where we were going to have product at retail to be able to match
16:09what was happening on court. So when we're going through that sales cycle, when we need them to place
16:14purchase orders so that we can get the shoe ready for retail, there's no purchase order. None.
16:27These are good questions. Very good questions.
16:29We had no purchase orders on the shoe. Because remember, none of the buyers believed in it.
16:35The most they could do at that moment in time for his very first shoe. And I don't know if this has
16:40ever been publicly stated, but it was like 5,000 pairs. And that's nothing. Like 5,000 pairs is
16:46nothing. And for God, we're slotted for 50 billion. You need 100,000 pairs to stop paying back that kind
16:51of money. I was in Philadelphia in the mall and the Foot Locker buyers were in there. I remember
16:58bumping into them because everyone was shopping the mall that day. And they were like, every single
17:02Foot Locker in Philly was sold out. It's sold out in two minutes.
17:06This word started spreading across the country. Because people across the country wanted this
17:13product. And no one could get the product. Because we never disclosed the number of how
17:18many pairs we ended up having. It probably ended up being the best thing that ever happened.
17:22So on the blue toe, we flooded the market with pairs of the blue toe. And that ended up even selling
17:28out. But it was hundreds of thousands of pairs. So by the time that one came, the market was primed.
17:34They were ready. And as they say, the rest is history.
17:40You know, you got your own shoe. But seeing somebody else with them on, that's the best
17:45part about it all. And I'm not talking about your family and your friends. You know,
17:50because they're going to wear them regardless. But just seeing the fans wear them. And to go even
17:56further, the people that's not even family would like to shoot. That's one of the best feelings ever.
18:02It's incredible.
18:06To me, growing up, how you look, how you play. You know, I want to make myself up to look not
18:14only just like a basketball player, but look like a superhero. A skinny one,
18:19but a superhero. So that's how I came up with styles. Like, what hasn't been done?
18:25The NBA has admitted to cracking down on traveling calls this year. One of the moves
18:29that's been singled out is the crossover dribble of Allen Iverson. Commonly known as palming the ball,
18:34Iverson was kind enough this afternoon to show us the slow, exaggerated look at the violation.
18:40When they have memos out on my move, I just, you know, just try to break it down if they say it's too
18:46hot. And if they sit my hand on the bottom of the ball, I put it right on the side. So,
18:52just try to change it up. And the referees haven't been calling me lately.
18:56The only person who's going to stop him night in and night out will be himself.
19:01No one player can guard him one-on-one.
19:03I can have all these different flavors because I'm coming up with original things that haven't
19:10been done. Nobody would do this. Nobody would do that. That's how I used to come up with it.
19:16Like a superhero to where they don't even look real.
19:21And it gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Philadelphia 76ers to present our rookie,
19:27Allen Iverson with the Schick NBA Rookie of the Year award. Yeah!
19:33I literally shadowed Allen everywhere he went. I loved being a fly on the wall, so to speak,
19:41in Allen's life. By me being everywhere with him all the time, it was also a way for me to
19:50make sure that he was always representing Reebok.
19:54I felt like in the beginning, the media had labeled him a little bit of a thug or menace.
19:59He used to catch a lot of flack for always having family and friends around. And they were calling
20:07all of us the posse. There were a lot of times historically where black athletes had become
20:13really successful and they had forgotten where they came from. And I think Allen was very conscious
20:19of not wanting to be one of those types of athletes. I think he wanted to make sure,
20:24in his success, that he was pulling people along the way.
20:27I know what my nephew likes. My name is Jesse. I'm Allen's aunt. This is his favorite dish,
20:34lasagna. I'm blessed to be part of his life. Every game, he always come up with some kind of new move.
20:41I tell my friend, I said, watch him, watch him.
20:43Allen Iverson's number one quality that everybody loved
20:46is that he did not change. Allen Iverson was never going to be the dude who was going to switch up
21:00and change just to maybe get that mainstream adulation that so many athletes, frankly,
21:07trade for authenticity all the time. And everybody loves somebody who's kind of going against the system.
21:14He just felt like rebellion and it was cool.
21:19I like to think that me being a basketball player is totally different from me setting trends.
21:27This is who I am and that's that. That's the great part of who I created within myself.
21:34You know what I mean? To be myself and let people know that I'm cool with that whole aspect of life,
21:40just being me. Mike had everyone wearing suits. Mike, because of his power, had everyone looking
21:47to him for a lot of direction in that way. And I think AI recognized that while all that's great and
21:53he loved Mike, Mike was like the big brother, the big uncle. But the little cousins don't necessarily
21:59want to be like the big brother and the big uncle. They want to create their own path, their own way.
22:02This was also when the urban market was starting to be focused on and paid attention to as a real
22:11consumer base. You got to remember prior to that, a lot of brands weren't really paying attention to
22:16the urban consumer in an intentional way.
22:37What's been the biggest surprise since you got in the NBA?
22:40I mean, the response that I've gotten from kids, you know, I mean, it's just unbelievable,
22:48man. Sometimes, you know, I'll be on my block and I see a kid just walk by and I'll sit there and
22:54watch him. I mean, he'll have one of my sneakers and I'll watch him until he gets out of sight,
22:57man, because I mean, because I used to be a sneaker fanatic, man, and finally see little kids wearing
23:02my sneaker and look up to me. They don't care about what these adults care about. What is Alan doing with
23:07his posse and blah, blah, blah. All they care about is Allen Iverson. Allen Iverson they see.
23:12And that's real with me, man. Okay. Magic had a bad TV show.
23:16Shaq did a genie movie. How are you going to embarrass yourself?
23:25It was amazing for me, you know, because me wanting to be a future marketer,
23:31it was definitely something that put a certifiable stamp on my career. I really got hands on with
23:38this project. I was brought to Philly because of AI. I ended up moving from Boston and moving to Philly.
23:47But had I not been there firsthand to kind of see it, dissect it, analyze it, and then try to figure out
23:53how to create and execute against it, we would have never built, let's call it anywhere from a half a
23:58billion to a billion dollar business on his behalf. We were kids, man. I mean, I was learning the
24:05business as I was showing him shoes. I didn't know what I was doing either. Q as well, we kind of
24:09learned on the job. I think what made it really work was we weren't trying to create a legacy. We
24:14weren't trying to set a standard. We weren't trying to create some new trend. We just like we're living
24:20in the moment of working with one of the, I think, most prolific players ever at the time. We were just
24:24trying to allow him to be himself. And I think that authenticity of who he is and us allowing him
24:31to do that is the magic of what happened. Reebok made the right pick. They were looking for the new
24:39hero. And Alan was that. He did everything that Reebok could possibly ever want. He was all the other
24:45great ones were before him.
24:54In 91 or 92, August that particular summer, Michael and I had just come back from the New York tour and
25:01we had a big meeting with the Nike staff. And for whatever reason, fate has it because it's true.
25:08Bill Knight, he fired me. Just like that. So I bounced around for a minute or two doing some other
25:16things. And I got a call. Rob Strauss from Peter Moore bought Adidas America. Rob and Peter invited me
25:28to fly to New York. And I go to New York and I meet him. I said, what are you going to do? We're buying
25:33Adidas America. We ain't got no money, but come aboard. We'll figure this out. And he asked me a
25:39question. How would you like to climb the same mountain twice?
25:46There were three or four kids that we were looking at, but we had to get it right.
25:51At this camp, we had all these high school kids, 150 of them in one building for a week.
25:58I went there looking for the next Michael. That's why I went there.
26:04What I saw move my life on and moved the shoe industry on. I saw a kid that came out of nowhere.
26:16I called Peter and I said, I got the guy. We're going to offer him. This is the one.
26:34This is the one.
26:48This is the one.
26:53Transcription by CastingWords
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