JUMPMAN

The ascendance of Michael Jordan in American culture.

Smith, a professor of sports history and author of The Sons of Westwood, takes his title from the silhouetted figure based on Nike’s Air Jordan poster of the NBA star soaring to the hoop against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline, a 1987 creation that is now ubiquitous. The author examines the endorsement deals, particularly with Nike and Gatorade, that made Jordan an iconic presence, contrasting this stature with Jordan's often-contentious relationships with coaches, team executives, and teammates as he led the Chicago Bulls to their first championship in 1991. Smith makes great use of secondary sources to examine Jordan's "double consciousness" as a Black man with incomparable crossover appeal to white America and the unintended expectations and consequences that accompanied that status. He leans heavily on other books, including Sam Smith's The Jordan Rules and Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops, to delve into the hypercompetitive Jordan's on-court rivalries with the Detroit Pistons and Los Angeles Lakers en route to the pinnacle of the NBA. The book will appeal to fans of Jordan, the Bulls, and the NBA of the 1980s and 1990s, as the author provides interesting backstories about team, league, and corporate figures who surrounded Jordan, particularly his opportunistic agent David Falk, greedy Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and paranoid general manager Jerry Krause. Relying heavily on secondary sources and following in the wake of the wildly popular documentary The Last Dance and the film Air, the book does not break new ground or offer particularly profound insights. The lack of deeper explorations of the similarities of Jordan's circumstances and personality to sports stars like Joe DiMaggio, who also reached rarified air in the American consciousness at severe personal expense, leaves readers with a sense of opportunities missed.

A thoroughly sourced compilation of familiar material.