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http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/15047018/how-nike-lost-stephen-curry-armour
IT'S NOV. 17, 2015, and it's throwback-jersey night in Oakland. Steph Curry flaunts a retro look as he readies himself to play the Raptors. The reigning MVP strolls into the locker room, sporting bright yellow shorts at what can only be described as 1970s length. After he ties his Under Armour Curry 2 sneakers, he dresses for the most public of preparations. By this point, it has become clear that fans are showing up earlier, in increasing numbers, just to see Curry warm up. His is now a cult of personality so powerful, thousands flock to see a man play basketball against the air.
Before Curry trots out to the screaming throngs, the man who can move a nation's worth of money explains his short shorts. He smiles and proclaims, "I'm going Bazemore style." Bazemore style, as in Bazemore's bold penchant for wearing shorts that are briefer than briefs. Bazemore was a Warrior once, an undrafted rookie in 2012 who seized scraps of attention with yoga-pose celebrations from the bench. Back then, while collecting DNPs, he got on the ground floor of something that rose because he asked Curry to lift it.
Since he entered the league, "Bazemore style," has also meant being swaddled in Under Armour apparel. "He's like the biggest spokesperson for the brand," says Curry, the actual biggest UA spokesperson. "Always wears new stuff, wears my stuff." You can often see Bazemore wearing Curry's signature shoes. Increasingly, America's youth are joining in that predilection.
On March 3, 2016, Business Insider relayed a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Jay Sole on Under Armour's business prospects. In it, Curry's potential worth to the company is placed at more than a staggering $14 billion. Sole's call on UA's stock is bearish relative to other prognosticators, but for one man's power to change everything.
His note reads, "UA's U.S. basketball shoe sales have increased over 350 percent YTD. Its Stephen Curry signature shoe business is already bigger than those of LeBron, Kobe and every other player except Michael Jordan. If Curry is the next Jordan, our call will likely be wrong."
What few fans know is the backstory of all this -- how the most electric player in a generation slipped through the grasp of the most powerful sports apparel company in the world, and how Under Armour pulled off the marketing heist of the century.
IN THE 2013 offseason -- coming off a year in which Curry had started 78 games and the Warriors had made the Western Conference semis -- Nike owned the first opportunity to keep Curry. It was its privilege as the incumbent with an advantage that extended beyond vast resources. "I was with them for years," Curry says. "It's kind of a weird process being pitched by the company you're already with. There was some familiar faces in there."
Curry was a Nike athlete long before 2013, though. His godfather, Greg Brink, works for Nike. He wore the shoes growing up, sported the swoosh at Davidson. In his breakout 54-point game at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 28, 2013, he was wearing Nike Zoom Hyperfuse, a pair of sneakers he still owns, tucked away in his East Bay Area home, shielded from the light of day. "They're not up front and center," Curry says of the pair. "I definitely kept all my favorite just as a memory of where my career has gone."
Nike had every advantage when it came to keeping Curry. Incumbency is a massive recruiting edge for a shoe company, as players often express a loyalty to these brands their NBA franchises might envy. And Nike wasn't just any shoe company. It's the shoe company that claims cultural and monetary dominance over the sneaker market. According to Nick DePaula of The Vertical, Nike has signed 68 percent of NBA players, more than 74 percent if you include Nike's Jordan Brand subsidiary. In the 2012 Olympics, Mike Krzyzewski, a Nike endorser, coached an entire roster of 11 Nike-signed athletes and Kevin Love, who merely wore the shoes.
Its hold on consumers is even tighter. According to Forbes, Nike accounted for 95.5 percent of the basketball sneaker market in 2014. In short, its grip on the NBA universe is reflective of a corporation claiming Michael Jordan heritage and a $100 billion market cap -- all advantages that might explain why Nike's pitch to Curry evoked something hastily thrown together by a hungover college student.
The August meeting took place on the second floor of the Oakland Marriott, three levels below Golden State's practice facility. Famed Nike power broker and LeBron James adviser Lynn Merritt was not present, a possible indication of the priority -- or lack thereof -- that Nike was placing on the meeting. Instead, Nico Harrison, a sports marketing director at the time, ran the meeting (Harrison, who has since been named Nike's vice president of North America basketball operations, did not respond to multiple interview requests).
In truth, there had been other indications that Nike lacked interest before this meeting. There was the matter of whether Curry would get to lead a Nike-sponsored camp for up-and-coming players. These camps aren't high on the list of fan concerns, but they matter deeply to the game's elite. They're a chance to teach a younger generation, to have interactions more meaningful than strangers clamoring for autographs on the street.
Getting to run such a camp meant something to Curry, in part because participating in one meant something to him. When he was younger, Curry had gone to Chris Paul's camp and the experience made a lasting impression. Says Curry's friend and former roommate Chris Strachan, "He was always at Chris Paul's camps as a young guy, and he always looked up to Chris Paul. He took a lot of the stuff that CP does with film sessions and he implemented it."
Strachan recalls of 2013, "That summer, when it was really decision time, were looking at Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis coming up. They gave Kyrie a camp and they gave Anthony Davis a camp. They didn't give Steph a camp."
The pitch meeting, according to Steph's father Dell, who was present, kicked off with one Nike official accidentally addressing Stephen as "Steph-on," the moniker, of course, of Steve Urkel's alter ego in Family Matters. "I heard some people pronounce his name wrong before," says Dell Curry. "I wasn't surprised. I was surprised that I didn't get a correction."
It got worse from there. A PowerPoint slide featured Kevin Durant's name, presumably left on by accident, presumably residue from repurposed materials. "I stopped paying attention after that," Dell says. Though Dell resolved to "keep a poker face," throughout the entirety of the pitch, the decision to leave Nike was in the works.
In the meeting, according to Dell, there was never a strong indication that Steph would become a signature athlete with Nike. "They have certain tiers of athletes," Dell says. "They have Kobe, LeBron and Durant, who were their three main guys. If he signed back with them, we're on that second tier."
Dell makes an analogy back to the past, when Dell's alma mater, Virginia Tech, offered his son the mere opportunity try out as a walk-on. This was familiar territory for a player who'd long prevailed over projections. "Wasn't highly recruited, wasn't highly respected, wasn't highly thought of," Dell says. "It was kind of like that, you know?"
Dell's message for his son was succinct: "Don't be afraid to try something new." Steph Curry had thrived on proving people wrong for the entirety of his career. He had delighted in it, even. And Nike was giving him fuel.
THE SNEAKER BUSINESS exists parallel to the basketball business, except not completely. Estimates peg total sneaker sales somewhere north of $20 billion annually, and rising. The total worth of NBA basketball is harder to gauge, but the $2.15 billion sale of the traditionally ignoble Los Angeles Clippers speaks to its riches. Both basketball and basketball shoes are massive operations, deriving their dollars from the consumer's obsession with winners. More specifically, with cool winners. Football can be ugly and popular. Baseball can be slow and profitable. The NBA needs physical charisma, individuals with moves so graceful viewers ache to imitate them.
You can't be Michael Jordan, but you can rent a part of his life when you wear Jordans. For millions of people, that slice of happiness is worth the cost.
Think of the sneaker world as composed of shadows -- shadows that might or might not reflect the size of players' on-court reputations. Consider Kyrie Irving. He's an All-Star, yes, but he has yet to be a serious MVP candidate or even conclude an NBA season healthy. In the sneaker world, though, the lights shine brightly on him, casting a larger shadow over the industry than his game would suggest. Irving's artfully serrated Kyrie 1s have done excellent business for Nike. Morgan Stanley projects his 2016 sales at $51 million and his newest Kyrie 2s received a wide release. Though he has played in only one postseason, Irving's handles, shot-making and viral Uncle Drew advertisements with Pepsi comprises an alchemy of "cool" necessary for moving product on a huge scale.
It's highly possible that back in 2013 Curry wasn't considered cool enough, relative to the building Kyrie Irving phenomenon. Both happened to play the same position and redundancy is a real issue in marketing. For these companies, it's imperative that whomever they're selling is defined and distinct. Basketball-shoe impresario Sonny Vaccaro, who has had his own complicated past with Nike -- he was instrumental in building their brand around Jordan but was fired in 1991 -- has a strict motto for marketing players: "You can only market the individual."
In this way, Nike's strength is indivisible from its weakness. As the top brand, it claims the most stars, by far. That's a massive advantage, but basketball marketing is an act of minimalism. Promote too many athletes and the message becomes garbled.
IRVING, FOR ALL his success, is still a relatively short point guard, and relatively short point guards traditionally haven't taken precedence at Nike. Irving's shoes have the lowest price point among their signature stars, at around $110, a pricetag that suggests volume matters more than prestige. Nike's highest-priced shoes are hawked by athletic wings. Michael Jordan was the prototype, Kobe was the heir, and LeBron carries on the tradition. To be the face of Nike means looking something beyond a regular person.
As someone familiar with Nike's marketing operation says, in regard to Curry: "Everything that makes him human and cuddly and an unlikely monster is anathema to Nike. They like studs with tight haircuts and muscles." This, then, is the paradox of Steph Curry: The reason he was ignored is the reason he's so popular. Nike looked past him for the very reason so many fans now can't look anywhere else.
"He went to Davidson," Vaccaro says. "He was always overlooked. He was skinny, he was frail, he was all the things you weren't supposed to be. He never got his due. All of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning, Steph Curry is on the scene. And this is the hardest thing for Nike to swallow right now."
Vaccaro says, "What you're witnessing is a phenomenon. This is like Michael signing with Nike in '84. He's going to morph into the most recognizable athlete. And why is he going to be that? Because he's like everybody else."
Nike, to be fair, can't be faulted for failing to foresee the current Steph Curry reality. That reality is just too surreal. Few predicted anything like last year's MVP and championship season. And so far this season, he's making those numbers look quaint. Even Curry's confidants confide they never saw this coming. Those who most deeply believed in Steph Curry, those who, for years, argued on his behalf, couldn't have imagined thousands of fans on the road, showing up 75 minutes before the tipoff, just to catch a glimpse of his warm-up.
Still, there were indications of a building trend, signs Nike ignored. In the 2012-13 season, Curry set the record for made 3-pointers, a testament to his unique skill, but also to how the NBA was shifting. The game was drifting farther out to the perimeter, with 3-pointers taking greater precedent in an increasingly analytically inclined league. Star centers were in short supply; Dwight Howard's reign as the best 5-man drew more opprobrium than praise. Point guards were on the rise. The next big thing on the horizon was relatively small.
While nobody in 2013 could have foreseen the magnitude of Curry-as-cultural-phenomenon, there were forecasts that something like it was imminent. Over that 2012-13 season, ESPN's Amin Elhassan repeatedly, and incredulously, stated that Curry should be a superstar. On May 6, 2013, he summarized his case on Twitter:
Again: how isnt Curry most popular player in NBA? If you're a lil kid, U can never relate to 6'8 250 w/ 40" vert, but u can relate to Curry
— Amin Elhassan (@AminESPN) May 7, 2013
LOOOOOONG READ....more on espn. ____________________________________________________________________
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