Sonny Vaccaro knows that Matt Damon looks nothing like an Italian kid from Trafford. But that doesn’t mean he had any misgivings about Damon playing him in “Air,” the feature film currently in theaters about how Vaccaro signed Michael Jordan to his first shoe deal at Nike.
“I am Italian-centric and Pittsburgh proud,” Vaccaro, 83, told the Post-Gazette. “This is one time that I could use the imagination of the writer of the script.
“Would I have liked to have seen [the late] James Gandolfini or an Italian guy play me at one time? You can’t get the whole cake, but I got a great piece of it in Matt Damon.”
Since its debut April 5, “Air” has earned more than $34 million at the domestic box office, a respectable total for an R-rated drama. It was directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars as eccentric Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The rest of the cast includes Jason Bateman as Nike director of marketing Rob Strasser, Chris Tucker as fellow Nike executive Howard White, Chris Messina as Jordan’s agent, David Falk, and Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother, Deloris.
Vaccaro is a boisterous figure who was excited to chat with the Post-Gazette earlier this week about his thoughts on “Air,” how Damon and Affleck captured that wild three-and-a-half-month stretch of his life, and why the deal Jordan signed to launch the Air Jordan shoe line at Nike forever altered how professional athletes are compensated in that industry.
“Michael changed the world,” Vaccaro said, “and changed my life.”
Betting it all
Locally, Vaccaro is best known for co-founding the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, a high school basketball showcase, in Pittsburgh with promoter and fellow Trafford native Pat DiCesare. His name also came up again recently as the guy who recruited plaintiff Ed O’Bannon for the lawsuit that ultimately resulted in new NCAA rules that allow athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness (NIL).
In 1984, though, Vaccaro was working in Nike’s basketball division as a scout charged with finding players the company could sign to shoe contracts. Nike was struggling at the time and lagged behind competitors like Adidas and Converse.
Vaccaro wasn’t even thinking of Jordan as a potential Nike client after attending the 1982 NCAA men’s championship game between Georgetown and North Carolina where Jordan hit the game-winning shot. In fact, he was rooting for Georgetown due to his friendship with coach John Thompson and relationships with many of the Hoyas’ players, including star Patrick Ewing.
“Personally, on that game on that day, I didn’t give a damn about Michael Jordan,” he said. “I was mad that he scored the basket that changed the world.”
Two years later, Vaccaro found himself watching film of that game again and realizing what Jordan “actually did” in terms of displaying the poise of a champion as a college freshman. That “aha!” moment is played out in “Air” in a scene where Vaccaro explains to Strasser why Nike needed to do whatever it took to sign Jordan.
“I bet my job on, let’s sign that kid,” Vaccaro said.
Spoiler alert: His gambit paid off, and Jordan inked a five-year, $2.5 million deal with Nike that gave him a piece of all future Air Jordan earnings. Billions of dollars in revenue later (and counting), it’s fair to say that Vaccaro’s efforts resulted in a mutually beneficial partnership between Nike and the man many believe is the greatest basketball player of all time.
“Right now, marketing moves the world,” Vaccaro said. “Jordan started that whole thing.”
‘Coastal friends’
Vaccaro got to see “Air” at its premiere in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. He wanted to make it clear that though he was invited to consult on the film, he had no real input on writer Alex Convery’s final script. While some elements of “Air” weren’t 100% accurate or were embellished for dramatic effect, Vaccaro said that nothing viewers see on screen was “a blatant lie or didn’t happen.”
“It was a movie, first of all, not a documentary,” he said. “There wasn’t anything I was offended on there. Things were changed a little bit or whatever, but the characters were the real characters in the world, and that’s how it went.”
These were relatively minor details in the grand scheme of things, but Vaccaro was a “transient employee” at that time and wasn’t actually living in Beaverton, Oregon, where Nike is headquartered. He also quipped that “I didn’t stay near the 7-Eleven” that Damon’s Vaccaro frequented during a few scenes in “Air.”
Affleck depicts Knight as a man with a penchant for spouting Buddhist aphorisms and who had no qualms about putting his bare feet on his desk while having a meeting with a Nike employee. Vaccaro believes that Affleck basically nailed Knight, who he described as “a very different boss” who was “a little doubtful” of his grand plans to sign Jordan before eventually coming around.
The film doesn’t mention Vaccaro’s days as an athlete himself, though he admitted that by 1984 he had gained a few pounds. He said that Damon definitely got his physicality and most of his ’80s wardrobe right, minus Vaccaro’s fondness for sweatsuits.
As a big fan of Damon’s decades of pre-“Air” work, it was a real treat for him to meet and get to know the “Bourne” star, and the two are now “coastal friends,” as Vaccaro put it.
“They won’t remember what I looked like or what I did,” Vaccaro said. “They’ll only remember what I looked like up there. They’ll see Matt Damon, and that’s pretty damn good.”
Kids from Trafford
One thing “Air” doesn’t show is that Vaccaro was actually fired from Nike years after the events of the film. That could’ve been a low point for him, but thanks to his reputation as the man who brought Jordan to Nike, he was able to stay afloat and continue being a prominent part of the sports marketing and college sports landscapes.
He could see “Air” being a valuable teaching tool at universities for students interested in sports marketing. In his mind, that a movie about his accomplishment could be simply called “Air” is a testament to how the powerhouse product line he helped spearhead continues to resonate with generation after generation of basketball shoe enthusiasts.
“Do you believe that ‘air’ would be on a movie all over the world doing unbelievable reviews?” he said. “It couldn’t have happened with Febreze ocean spray. Everyone thinks of ‘air,’ and they think of Air Jordan. I just think it’s amazing. We put ‘air’ on the title, and 10 million people are watching the movie.”
He urged Pittsburghers to check out “Air” so they can take in this story of how “a small group of people can open up a whole new world.” He said it was the same kind of out-of-the-box thinking as his and DiCesare’s wild idea to hold a high school basketball all-star game in their hometown.
“This is what these two kids from Trafford did,” Vaccaro said. “It’s the American dream. Even though we’re screwed up now, things can still happen.”
Vaccaro thanked Damon, Affleck and Convery for immortalizing one of his greatest achievements and giving him the opportunity to break into the one space he had yet to conquer.
“You saved that kid from Trafford at 83 years old,” he said. “They invited me. That’s very rare today. They could’ve used me, because I’m a public person. They opened up a Hollywood door for me that I never had before.”
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