"Right now, LeBron James is losing." How Nike Lost Steph to Under Armour

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spoonfed

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TrueHoop Presents: You won't believe how Nike lost Steph

Pretty long article. Some choice quotes:

On March 3, 2016, Business Insider relayed a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Jay Sole on Under Armour's business prospects. In it, Curry's potential worth to the company is placed at more than a staggering $14 billion. Sole's call on UA's stock is bearish relative to other prognosticators, but for one man's power to change everything.

His note reads, "UA's U.S. basketball shoe sales have increased over 350 percent YTD. Its Stephen Curry signature shoe business is already bigger than those of LeBron, Kobe and every other player except Michael Jordan. If Curry is the next Jordan, our call will likely be wrong."

What few fans know is the backstory of all this -- how the most electric player in a generation slipped through the grasp of the most powerful sports apparel company in the world, and how Under Armour pulled off the marketing heist of the century.
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The pitch meeting, according to Steph's father Dell, who was present, kicked off with one Nike official accidentally addressing Stephen as "Steph-on," the moniker, of course, of Steve Urkel's alter ego in Family Matters. "I heard some people pronounce his name wrong before," says Dell Curry. "I wasn't surprised. I was surprised that I didn't get a correction."

It got worse from there. A PowerPoint slide featured Kevin Durant's name, presumably left on by accident, presumably residue from repurposed materials. "I stopped paying attention after that," Dell says. Though Dell resolved to "keep a poker face," throughout the entirety of the pitch, the decision to leave Nike was in the works.

In the meeting, according to Dell, there was never a strong indication that Steph would become a signature athlete with Nike. "They have certain tiers of athletes," Dell says. "They have Kobe, LeBron and Durant, who were their three main guys. If he signed back with them, we're on that second tier."

Dell makes an analogy back to the past, when Dell's alma mater, Virginia Tech, offered his son the mere opportunity try out as a walk-on. This was familiar territory for a player who'd long prevailed over projections. "Wasn't highly recruited, wasn't highly respected, wasn't highly thought of," Dell says. "It was kind of like that, you know?"

Dell's message for his son was succinct: "Don't be afraid to try something new." Steph Curry had thrived on proving people wrong for the entirety of his career. He had delighted in it, even. And Nike was giving him fuel.
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Nike, to be fair, can't be faulted for failing to foresee the current Steph Curry reality. That reality is just too surreal. Few predicted anything like last year's MVP and championship season. And so far this season, he's making those numbers look quaint. Even Curry's confidants confide they never saw this coming. Those who most deeply believed in Steph Curry, those who, for years, argued on his behalf, couldn't have imagined thousands of fans on the road, showing up 75 minutes before the tipoff, just to catch a glimpse of his warm-up.

Still, there were indications of a building trend, signs Nike ignored. In the 2012-13 season, Curry set the record for made 3-pointers, a testament to his unique skill, but also to how the NBA was shifting. The game was drifting farther out to the perimeter, with 3-pointers taking greater precedent in an increasingly analytically inclined league. Star centers were in short supply; Dwight Howard's reign as the best 5-man drew more opprobrium than praise. Point guards were on the rise. The next big thing on the horizon was relatively small.

While nobody in 2013 could have foreseen the magnitude of Curry-as-cultural-phenomenon, there were forecasts that something like it was imminent. Over that 2012-13 season, ESPN's Amin Elhassan repeatedly, and incredulously, stated that Curry should be a superstar.
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Consider: We associate Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls, but today, he rarely associates with the Chicago Bulls. In contrast, his "Jordan Brand" association with Nike continues to be fruitful. In 2014, according to Forbes, Jordan earned $100 million from Nike. He made just under $94 million from NBA contracts over his career.

To this day, kids are still wearing Jordans. People across America sport the enduringly cool Jordan 11s, recently "retroed" to commemorate Chicago's 72-win season. In the fickle world of fashion, Michael's original Jordan 1, released in 1985, is still popular. Look down as you walk the streets of any city, and it's as if Jordan never retired.

It's not immortality, but it might be as close as an athlete gets in the ephemeral world in which we live.

So Curry and James aren't just salvos in a battle between brands; it's a personal war to see whose cultural impact resonates years after they've retired. It's a fight for something even bigger than a basketball career. And right now, despite four MVPs and two championships, LeBron James is losing.
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Some would say the Curry disaster invigorates Nike, motivating the company right as it seizes another key advantage. As athletic companies move into wearable technology, Nike boasts Apple CEO Tim Cook as a member of its board. Sonny Vaccaro is less sanguine on what losing Curry means for one of the world's biggest companies. "This is Nike's biggest fear," he says. "They can't overcome this in the shoe business. This is going to be detrimental to them. Psychologically."

If that's so, that psychological damage was self inflicted. For all Under Armour did and for all Nike didn't do, Nike still had an opportunity to salvage the situation when Curry indicated he wanted to sign elsewhere.

In 2013, Nike retained Curry's matching rights, analogous to how NBA restricted free agency works. They still could have signed Curry, regardless of his preferences. According to a Sept. 16, 2015, report from ESPN's Darren Rovell, "Nike failed to match a deal worth less than $4 million a year."

Stone says of his rival, "They made a decision not to match. That was just their decision. It wasn't because the deal was so out of their ballpark." Stone characterizes the decision as, "If you don't want to be here, then don't be here." Athletes are expected to want Nike, to have always wanted Nike from the time they were kids. This, after all, is the company with the richest tradition.

Michael Jordan defines that past, and still outsells their modern athletes. Though Jordan Brand's most popular shoes are, of course, the sneakers MJ actually played in, they release new models, brandished by Russell Westbrook. Their newest, the Jordan 30, comes with a Westbrook-focused ad, narrated by a child-aged hype man. The kid yells, "What y'all expect? Another choir boy running point?!" It's a jab that did not go unnoticed in Curry's camp. The ad's closing tag is, "The Next Frontier of Flight."

Perhaps this is how Nike missed. Years of promoting Michael Jordan descendents made them oblivious to a player who shot the ball over that whole paradigm. It left them vulnerable to Kent Bazemore, and a company with less than 1 percent of the sneaker market. The next frontier of flight didn't happen to be the next frontier of basketball. The next frontier happened to be Steph Curry, whose launches aren't leaps, yet whose range commands a zeitgeist.
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Calling him Stefan? Leaving Durant's name on the pitch slides? The disrespect was real. :mjlol:
 
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Walt

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For all Under Armour did and for all Nike didn't do, Nike still had an opportunity to salvage the situation when Curry indicated he wanted to sign elsewhere.

In 2013, Nike retained Curry's matching rights, analogous to how NBA restricted free agency works. They still could have signed Curry, regardless of his preferences. According to a Sept. 16, 2015, report from ESPN's Darren Rovell, "Nike failed to match a deal worth less than $4 million a year."

:ufdup:
 
GoldenGlove

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I'm glad this is coming out, because I wanted to reach into my computer screen and slap the shyt out of all the people who were posting and sharing that bullshyt story about Curry leaving Nike because they wouldn't allow him to put a bible scripture on his shoes

:snoop:
 
scarhead

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Curry legitimized the UA brand to the younger demographics (which is a huge fukking deal, really) but that's kinda where it stops. Jordans transcended athletic gear market and became a pop culture/lifestyle staple. Still stupid on Nike's part to let him slip away like that though.
 
Codeine Bryant

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The Delly Lama said:
nikka ain't nobody buying Steph Curry ugly ass shoes over Nike... :russ:

if you actually believe this propaganda :dead:
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Have you seen the LeBron 12s and 13s?
Hideous :scust:

Way more people are buying UA Currys than LeBrons. UA Currys sell out. Nobody is scooping up LeBron's last couple shoes and flipping em for money.
 
Walt

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Another key section:

FOLLOWING A DECEMBER victory over the Celtics, LeBron James took the typical postgame questions, until a query deviated from the norm. A reporter asks him about Under Armour -- or at least tries to. LeBron interrupts, saying, "Who? Who? Who is that?" (Later, in an interview with Sole Collector, Curry is asked about the exchange. He says of LeBron, "Oh, he knows. That's why he said that.")

James ends the conversation by revealing that only one (sneaker) team is fit for his lips, saying, "I only know Nike. That's it. Lifetime."

James indeed has a lifetime contract with Nike worth more than $500 million, according to USA Today. He has a one-year deal with the Cavs, probably as a means of maximizing his profit and leverage. If that reporter had been allowed another subversive follow up, perhaps this question would have yielded interesting results: "Who is your primary employer?"

"Your primary employer is who pays you the most money," ESPN's Bomani Jones says. "LeBron was Team Nike before he was a Cleveland Cavalier or a member of the Miami Heat or any of those things. We contextualize guys around the teams they play for because that's the relevant variable for the kind of work that we do."

It's perhaps more comforting to believe the team commands primary allegiance. Of course, when it comes to success on the court, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Nike wins if LeBron's Cavs win. It just so happens that James still wears Nikes for his next team, should he ever decide to ditch Cleveland. And James will still draw checks from Nike, long after he's done with the Cavs. He's "lifetime," after all.
 
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