Ja Morant’s ready to lead the next generation of Nike Basketball
Ja Morant has missed plenty of ambitious dunks since entering the NBA. But Nike execs surely smiled when Morant was asked after the recent Indiana Pacers game about the difference in making his latest poster. “His style of play is the holy grail to jump higher,” said Scott Munson, Nike vice president of global basketball. “Kids and players everywhere want to emulate that.” With Morant’s star power on the rise, Nike is showing its belief in the explosive 6-foot-2 point guard. The company made Morant its latest signature athlete and the future face of its basketball business by launching the Nike Ja 1 sneaker this spring. Morant is the 23 rd NBA player in the swoosh’s 50-year history to receive a namesake model. “Y’all did it again,” Morant recalled telling his Nike team when it first showed him a Ja 1 sample in his size. It was a black wear-test edition. Morant put the sneakers on immediately, wearing them for six hours straight during an all-day meeting with the brand. “It’s something I dreamed of and wanted all along,” he said. “Finally, I got it.”The iconic Nike Air-Jordan brand
The film is set in the early 1984 when Nike was still trying to make a name in sportswear and Jordan was a rookie. It shows how the massively popular Air Jordan brand was born. “This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time,” the film’s logline reads.
