Yes, Michael Jordan wore Converse.
That’s what the team wore when he was winning a national championship at North Carolina, and that’s what he wore as a college member of the 1984 USA Olympic Basketball team.
Now you can own the shoes Jordan wore in the USA’s Gold Medal game win over Spain (the USSR and it’s Eastern Bloc countries boycotted those games). Gray Flannel Auctions has put them on the block, as noted at NBC’s Olympic Talk and first reported by Darren Rovell at ESPN.The shoes are white Converse, the brand Jordan wore at North Carolina, thanks to a $10,000 a year deal that was given to his coach, Dean Smith, at the time.
Grey Flannel’s Michael Russek said the auction house verified the chain of custody of the shoes by confirming that the consignor was indeed a ball boy and being presented with photos of him in the locker room in Los Angeles. He said that Jordan signed the shoes at the time before handing it to the consignor.
Those Olympics were Jordan’s coming out party — he led Team USA with 17.1 points a game, on a team that had Chris Mullin, Patrick Ewing, Sam Perkins, Steve Alford, Wayman Tisdale and Leon Wood among others. That was back when the USA still sent college players to the Olympics, Jordan would be part of the 1992 Dream Team that changed that.
Right after the 1984 Olympics, Jordan signed a shoe contract with Nike.
The Converse 1984 shoes will go on the auction block in October. Grey Flannel Auctions was in charge of the sale of Jordan’s “flu game” shoes last year, which netting $104,765. This likely doesn’t go for quite that much, but it will not go cheaply.
