Michael Jordan’s career with basketball can be broken down to a number of phases. There was the three-peat phase, the baseball stage, the player/coach stage, and team owner stage, but due to the sheer age and limited amount of visual pieces floating around, we don’t often get a chance to look at the ‘Rookie stage’. Michael’s 28.2 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, and 2.4 steals is undoubtedly the greatest rookie campaign by a guard in NBA history, and ranking fourth in the league in scoring meant a nice invite to the NBA All-Star Game. This is where these jaw-dropping, mind-blowing Air Jordan artifacts come in; you’re looking at a game-worn AND autographed pair of the original Air Jordan 1, used during the 1985 NBA All-Star Game. How’d is it up for sale now? The owner of the shoes has quite the spellbinding story (well, not exactly riveting stuff, but definitely an interesting read), so check out the full story and images of the sneakers below and head to greyflannelauctions to get your bid in.
Owner: Robert Crawford, a well-documented sports photographer at UNC while Michael Jordan was at the University)
“I asked Michael if he would give me a pair of his new Nike shoes. At this game, he had already promised his shoes to someone but he asked when I would see him again. I told him at the All-Star Game in February. He promised me a pair from that game. On Sunday, the East team dressed in a football locker room so there was a lot of room around the player’s locker. After the game, Michael was swarmed with reporters but I was able to get his attention, I pointed to his shoes still on his feet. He took them off and threw them to me over the heads of the reporters. Since they were not yet signed, I put a black sharpie in one of the shoes and threw them back to him. I watched him sign both shoes and he threw them back to me, they have been in my personal collection since 1985.”
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