Word: knights
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Basically, our culture, and our style, is to be a rebel, and we sort of enjoy doing that," says Knight, who created a jock empire based on hero worship backed up with good product and great advertising. "Now that we've reached a certain size, there's a fine line between being a rebel and being a bully, and yeah, we have to walk that line...
Nike is staying hitched to the stars. Indeed, it is hard to overstate Nike's veneration for top jocks. The company's verdant campus headquarters just outside Portland is a sort of perspiration museum. Knight's office is in the John McEnroe Building. Other structures are named for Jordan and marathoners Alberto Salazar and Joan Benoit Samuelson. Preschool linebackers are dropped off in the Joe Paterno day-care facility, while the grownups work out in the Bo Jackson sports center...
...sports heritage is genuine. Knight launched the company in 1964 with Bill Bowerman, his former track coach at the University of Oregon. Knight's business plan, hatched as an M.B.A. project at Stanford, was straightforward. He figured that by importing shoes made in Japan, where labor was then cheap, he could undercut the dominant player, Adidas. At first he merely imported Japanese running shoes. Then Bowerman, in the kitchen one morning, had one of those Aha! ideas. He made an outsole by pouring a rubber compound into the waffle iron. The waffle trainer was born--and Nike was ready...
From Bowerman, a legendary coach, Knight got two things: an innovative track shoe and a relentless appetite for competition. "Every time I tour people around, I show them a picture of Phil Knight running behind Jim Grelle," says Hollister, who ran track with Knight and became one of Nike's first employees. It was Knight's customary position. Grelle was a champion, and Knight never caught him, says Hollister, but he never stopped pursuing. Another Oregon track god, Steve Prefontaine, became patriarch of the culture. "Pre," a rebellious soul and ferocious competitor, prodded Knight endlessly to improve the quality...
Then came Michael Jordan. Knight signed the great Zeus of hoops in 1984, or a couple of hundred million Airs ago. Although Jordan too has been scorched by some criticism about the high price of sneakers, he remains an all-world marketer. He recently turned a nationally televised game into a two-hour Nike commercial by donning a 14-year-old pair of Air Jordans for his "last" appearance at Madison Square Garden. Then he tortured the New York Knicks for 42 points...