‘Michael Jordan changed the world’: the true story behind Nike movie Air

“I didn’t give a damn about Michael Jordan,” recalls Sonny Vaccaro. “He did not play in my all-star game that I had for 20 years. I didn’t pick him; I picked somebody else who was damn good too.”

But lodged somewhere in the brain of Vaccaro, an executive at Nike hunting basketball’s next big thing, was the memory of 1982 and a moment for the sporting gods. Jordan, a 19-year-old freshman displaying preternatural calm, had made a 16ft jump shot with 15 seconds left to win the national college championship for North Carolina.

The importance of this moment is vivid in Air, a new movie in which Matt Damon plays Vaccaro as middle-aged, out of shape and short of breath – literally gasping for air – as he tries to save what in 1984 was Nike’s fledgling and flailing basketball division. Director Ben Affleck plays the Nike co-founder Phil Knight while Viola Davis brings steely dignity to Jordan’s mother, Deloris.

Jordan himself is not shown in the film apart from some archive clips including that life-changing shot in 1982, which Damon’s Vaccaro is seen studying on VHS video tape again and again. “That is such a great scene because you can watch it happen now,” Vaccaro, now 83, says by phone from Palm Springs, California. “It was 40 years ago and there are kids who weren’t born yet.”

In the movie version, Vaccaro becomes convinced that Jordan is special and that Nike should bet everything on him to achieve success in the NBA. But he faces scepticism from Knight and fierce competition from more established shoe rivals Adidas and Converse.

The real Vaccaro, who was an adviser on the film, recalls that he had only met Jordan once. “He basically said he loved Adidas right up front. He was probably going to Adidas if they gave as much