What is the biggest takeaway from revolutionizing sneaker culture? About $330 million. Nike has more than profited out of Michael Jordan and the brand he created for them. In exchange, he gets a decent slice of the pie. It started with humble expectations and exceeded to something unprecedented almost four decades later.

Today, the Jordan Brand by itself is set to become the second-largest footwear brand in the US after its parent brand. Imagine a world where this partnership didn’t last. Very few know that it came pretty close. A stroke of bad luck nearly derailed the growth of Jordan Brand. But things just have a way of working out.

The glue that keeps MJ-Nike together – Tinker Hatfield

The genius behind the Air Jordan is Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s primary designer. He understands Michael Jordan’s philosophy best and is the main reason the 6x NBA champion has stayed with Nike this long. He started at the brand in 1981 and was in shoe design since 1985. For context, Nike signed rookie MJ in 1984 for five years and released the first Air Jordan in 1985.

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Jordan’s 1985-86 season was cut short by his most serious injury – a broken foot in the third game of the year. He missed 64 games while the Chicago Bulls made it to the Playoffs. Nike was due to release the Air Jordan 3 soon while MJ was heavily reconsidering his contract with the brand. He was reportedly in talks with Converse and on the verge of going to Adidas. Close to losing the namesake of their biggest seller, they brought Hatfield on board to save it.

“I got the project really, really late in the normal process. I jumped on a plane; I really didn’t have time to think…I needed to meet with Michael and develop a relationship. And in the case of that time period, really convince him to stay at Nike. We all felt that if the design was fantastic, he would be more apt to re-sign with us,” Hatfield recalled.

Getting on a flight was not the only challenge. Hatfield said that the injury made Jordan re-evaluate how sneakers make a healthy athlete. Hatfied used that as his inspiration to come up with a design pitch. He successfully impressed His Airness and kept him at Nike for years to come. We owe Hatfield for Air Jordans 3 through 15, XX, and XX3. He’s also a co-designer on the 2010 and XXX editions. MJ, on the other hand, owes him for the hundreds of millions he receives in Nike royalties every years.

If it wasn’t for Hatfield, we wouldn’t have the Jordan Brand as it were today. And both the world and MJ would be poorer for it.

Michael Jordan’s big pay off

In an unrivalled career of 15 seasons with two three-peats between three retirements, Michael Jordan amassed about $94 million as an NBA player. What firmly placed him in the exclusive club of billionaire athletes is his Nike partnership and the 5% royalty he gets from them.

Thanks to the Jordan Brand, Nike holds a significant section of the sneaker market. It’s grown the Jumpman sales from $2.8 billion in 2018 to 6.6 billion in 2023. MJ’s cut amounts to about $330 million every year.

Nike, the largest footwear brand in the country, said that the Jordan Brand will soon be the second dominant footwear giant ahead of the same brand that almost stole the Jumpman.

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Tinker Hatfield can take credit for that. Today, Michael Jordan is worth over $3 billion. And Hatfield can take just a little bit of credit for that too.