An awful pitch and Riley Curry helped convince Steph to leave Nike
In life and in business, first impressions are important. Good ones can set the stage for long and fruitful relationships, and bad ones can come back to bite you. In the case of Nike and Stephen Curry, a rough start to a critical meeting might very well have been a multibillion-dollar inflection point in the athletic apparel game.
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
ESPN.com’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss dropped a monster story on Wednesday, tracing the steps that led Curry to leave Nike for an endorsement deal with Under Armour in the summer of 2013. What seemed at the time like a significant if not earth-shaking move on the sneaker free agency waiver wire became a game-changer as Curry skyrocketed to superstardom, earned recognition as the league’s Most Valuable Player and led the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA championship in 40 years. Now one of the most popular athletes in the world, Curry’s signature sneakers have become a hot commodity, with one analyst estimating his value to Under Armour’s growing brand at a staggering $14 billion.
Curry might have been wearing swooshes during that run — “first impressions” stuff aside, he’d worn Nikes at college and in the pros, and his godfather works for the company – had it not been for one ill-fated meeting that, according to Strauss, “evoked something hastily thrown together by a hungover college student,” and that got off on a decidedly wrong foot:
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.” […]
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). […]
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.
The shoddy presentation indicated to Dell, a 16-year NBA veteran who has provided color commentary on Charlotte Bobcats and Hornets games for the last seven years, that Nike viewed his son as merely another face in the crowd rather than a top-tier talent worthy of prioritization on the same level as signature stars LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant.
There were other indicators, too, as Strauss notes, including Steph being passed over for a spot running a Nike-sponsored camp and an apparent perception that Curry’s game and persona might not have been as neatly marketable as the more athletically explosive and clearly “cool” players that Nike has largely, and very successfully, featured in the past. All that — plus relentless guerilla marketing by Curry’s Warriors teammate, Kent Bazemore, whom Under Armour signed despite being an undrafted rookie and on whom UA dropped an avalanche of product that got the attention of multiple Dubs, including Curry — opened the door to Steph considering a move from the 800-pound gorilla in the sneaker and apparel game to the comparatively much smaller shop in Maryland.
It didn’t seal the deal, though. To hear Steph tell it, the final call was made by — who else? — the Internet’s favorite daughter:
“My favorite story is Riley,” Steph says. It’s a few weeks before a final decision on the shoe contract must be made. At his agent Jeff Austin’s house in Hermosa Beach, California, Curry surveys the array of shoes before him. He asks his baby daughter, “Riley, which one do you like?”
At this point, Riley is little over 1 year old. She is presented with a Nike sneaker, an Adidas sneaker and an Under Armour sneaker. She picks up “shoe one,” a Nike. “Threw it over her shoulder,” Curry says. “She picked up shoe two, threw it over her shoulder. She picked up the third shoe, walked over and handed it to me.” It was the Under Armour Anatomix Spawn. “So I knew right then,” Curry says, smiling.
OK, so the keys to getting Stephen Curry to endorse your sneakers are:
• Say his name right;
• Correct yourself if you say his name wrong;
• Don’t just re-use the same slideshow you made for another dude;
• Spend a year hooking up his friend with so much free stuff he literally can’t ignore it;
• Design shoes to which a toddler would gravitate; and
• When given the opportunity to match a competing company’s offer for his services, pony up the $4 million a year.
Just do all that, and you should be all set. (Except that you’re going to have to wait until 2024 to get your next shot at him.)
To be fair, the bigwigs at Nike were far from the only ones who didn’t anticipate Curry becoming a literally unprecedented sensation who would come to lead the league in scoring and highlight-reel plays while vaulting the Warriors to a title and a shot at breaking the NBA’s single-season win record. The list of people who didn’t have that one pegged is very long, and includes the guy writing this thing you’re reading. And it’s not exactly like Nike’s hurting in Curry’s absence; nearly three-quarters of NBA players rock Nikes every night, and soon the whole league will be wearing Nike apparel every time a game tips off. They continue to print money and retain a stranglehold on the basketball sneaker market.
Still, though, even as Nike trots out ad campaigns highlighting all the stars, superstars and icons it does have in the fold, it only seems to highlight the fact that the contemporary game’s best and most significant player no longer hangs in Nike’s sky:
Let that lingering undertone be a lesson to us all: next time we’ve got to take a meeting, let’s remember to take an extra minute or two to get everyone’s names right. It might not wind up mattering, but it really, really might.
More NBA coverage:
– – – – – – –
Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
