Tinker Hatfield gets the documentaries. Phil Knight gets the memoir on every airport shelf. The Black men who turned Michael Jordan's endorsement deal into a $7 billion division mostly get a paragraph. Three of them deserve the whole page: Howard White, who managed Jordan day to day for the length of his Bulls career; Larry Miller, who ran the brand for its first growth decade while carrying a secret that would have ended him; and Wilson Smith III, the designer who took the pencil from Hatfield.
Howard White: the man in the 1984 room
White grew up in Hampton, Virginia, the son of a maid, an All-American point guard at Kecoughtan High who wore "H" on his Maryland jersey from 1969 to 1973 and was drafted by the Capital Bullets before his knees quit. He joined Nike in 1978 as a field marketing rep and, per Andscape, became the company's longest-tenured Black executive. He sat in Nike's 1984 pitch to the Jordan family. When the deal closed, he became Jordan's daily contact, mentor and fixer, the man Michael called, for the full 13-year Bulls run. His title today is Vice President of Jordan Brand Affairs. His 2003 book "Believe to Achieve" is a management text built on his mother's rule about treating everyone with respect.
The brand finally put his initial on a shoe in 2023: the Air Jordan 2 "Wings" (DZ7391-103), released June 10, with the H on the heel and Wings program branding. That program is his other legacy. Boardroom reports Wings, which grew out of an earlier "Fundamentals" effort at the brand's founding and was formalized with Larry Miller, has awarded more than 2,800 scholarships across North America, Paris, Manila and China. White's line on it: "Young people are getting an education paid for by these shoes and internships."
Larry Miller: the president with a secret
Miller's story is the one the brand did not tell for 40 years. He was 16 and in a West Philadelphia gang in 1965 when he shot and killed a teenager named Edward White; he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served four and a half years, Wikipedia's account notes, earning a Temple accounting degree in 1982 partly while incarcerated. Nike hired him in 1997 as vice president and general manager of Nike Basketball, the same year Jordan Brand was announced, and made him Jordan Brand president from 1999 to 2006. He left to run the Portland Trail Blazers, then came back to the brand in 2012.
He told no one at Nike about the conviction until he wrote it down. "Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom," co-written with his daughter Laila Lacy, took 13 years to finish, per Boardroom, and its valedictorian line from his prison graduation is the thesis: "Let's not serve time, let's let time serve us." Miller ran the brand through the Countdown Packs, the first international expansion and the transition from Jordan the player to Jordan the logo, all while assuming that a background check could take it away. He now chairs the Jordan Brand advisory board and has built the JUMP initiative to help other formerly incarcerated people into corporate work.
Wilson Smith III: the designer after Tinker
The design credit on the Air Jordan line reads Peter Moore, Bruce Kilgore, then Hatfield for a decade, and then a name most collectors cannot place. Wilson Smith III, a Nike architect-turned-designer, took the 16 and the 17. The 16 gave the line its magnetic shroud and translucent sole; the 17 got jazz notes on the lace caps, a metal briefcase and a $200 price, per Nike's history page. Smith was the first Black designer to lead an Air Jordan, and he inherited the hardest brief in the building: design for a man who had left the game, then for a man who came back to a bad team. Those shoes are being retroed this fall in the Black Pack. His name is still not in most of the coverage.
Why the names matter
Jordan Brand sells Black culture to the world and is owned by a company whose leadership has never looked like its customer. The exceptions are these men. White got Jordan to trust Nike. Miller made the brand a business. Smith kept the line alive when the highlights stopped. None of them owns a share of the Jumpman. All of them made it worth owning.
The take
The next time the brand runs a "family" campaign, count the Black executives in the photograph and check the org chart. Howard White, Larry Miller and Wilson Smith III are proof that Jordan Brand has always had Black leadership, and proof of the limit: leadership is a salary, not equity, and the people who built the thing still get paid in wages while the thing is valued in billions.
## Sources - 'The Godfather of the Jordan Brand': How Howard White found his calling — Andscape, June 9, 2023 - How Howard White Spread His Wings with Jordan Brand — Boardroom, July 9, 2023 - Larry Miller Overcame it All to Build the Jordan Brand — Boardroom, January 28, 2022 - Larry Miller (sports executive) — Wikipedia - The History of the Air Jordan 17 — Nike