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Michael Jordan and Nike are considered one of the best partnerships across all sports. Nike was struggling in the basketball sneaker market before it signed Jordan to that then-historic $ 500K-per-year deal.
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The Swoosh brand is now the top sneaker brand in basketball and it has been such since Jordan wore their shoes in 1984. Meanwhile, Jordan became the first billionaire the NBA produced and he is now the richest of the four billionaires who played for the association.
However, if you ask Big Baller Brand founder LaVar Ball, the two are not a perfect match because, filthy rich as MJ has become today, he never got what he truly deserved from Phil Knight’s brand.
“Let me tell you something about Jordan that will make your head spin,” Ball said during his appearance on “The Handle.” “He made Nike over a trillion dollars. And his bank account never went over 3 or 4 billion. Them numbers is raggedy. If I made anybody a trillion dollars at anything, you better give me at least 100 billion.”
Nike hasn’t even made $1trillion in revenues all-time
First of all, $1 trillion is a crazy number because if you manually add up Nike’s all-time revenue using the per-year data available online, you’ll likely hit $800 billion, which is 20 percent short of LaVar’s stated figures. And that’s the total revenue from the entire company.
Meanwhile, since 1997, Jordan has made money off Jordan Brand, the business division Nike established to solely cater to Jordan shoes and apparel. The annual revenue figures available online aren’t complete, but from 2016 to 2025, it generated $46 billion in revenue and was Nike’s best-performing division in 2024. If you make a calculated guess based on those figures, it’s still not close to $1 trillion.
What’s likely true is Jordan’s reported 5 percent royalty from Jordan Brand, which isn’t too shabby considering he made roughly $350 million last year from Jordan Brand’s $7 billion in revenue. However, based on LaVar’s calculation, $100 billion from $1 trillion is 10 percent, which means, if LaVar is to be followed, Jordan has received only half what he deserves, but obviously not $100 billion.
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Iggy said MJ is underpaid by Nike
Like LaVar, former Golden State Warriors star Andre Iguodala thinks Jordan is underpaid by Nike not only because Jordan Brand is one of Nike’s top-performing divisions year after year, but also because Nike’s value has increased drastically since Jordan came on board in 1984.
“So you look at Arthur Ashe, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. Michael Jordan’s agent at the time was like, ‘I’m going to apply the same type of setup as they did. “Air” kind of showed you how they were thinking in terms of royalties, thinking in terms of having my own line. “If you really think about it, Michael Jordan is probably still underpaid at Nike if you really, really want to have that conversation,” Iguodala said.
Iggy and LaVar make sense. Maybe 5 percent of total revenue isn’t really what MJ is worth to Nike. Perhaps he deserves more. However, when Ball talks about $1 trillion in Nike revenue and $100 billion of net worth for Jordan, it’s more rhetorical than literal. But that’s how LaVar operates. Everything is exaggerated.
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This story was originally published August 3, 2026 at 1:07 AM.