A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
In a new memoir, Sonny Vaccaro is pulling back the curtain on his storied and complex life in sports marketing.
SONNY VACCARO: What I was able to do for the first and last time is say to the public, ladies and gentlemen, this is how it happened.
MARTÍNEZ: In 1984, Vaccaro signed Michael Jordan to Nike. Twelve years later, in 1996, he signed Kobe Bryant to Adidas. And for over 20 years, he ran the elite ABCD high school basketball camp, which trained and scouted new generations of professional basketball players. More recently, Vaccaro took on the NCAA to secure the rights of college athletes to profit from their personal brand. His new book is called "Legends And Soles: The Memoir Of An American Original." And I spoke with Vaccaro and his co-author, sports journalist Armen Keteyian.
So, Sonny, how did your upbringing in western Pennsylvania shape what you became, and maybe more importantly, what you believed in?
VACCARO: Well, my upbringing started - I was born right before World War II. I watched the evolution of what strife and hurt was. I've been fortunate. I'm 85 years old, so I remember that war. I remember the poverty. I remember what we got through. And I also remember never thinking that that would be what my life was because my parents always gave me the OK as long as it was the right thing to do. They backed me. They understood me.
MARTÍNEZ: Armen, when Sonny was working for Nike, you know, he was working for a shoe brand. But I don't know necessarily if any athlete back then in the early '80s thought of themselves as a brand. How do we see that thinking change through Sonny's work?
ARMEN KETEYIAN: Well, it's the Jordan brand. You know, you talk about a seismic moment in sports, there would be no Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Caitlin Clark - you could name 1,000 athletes right now that have shoe deals - without those pivotal moments of Sonny, A, seeing something in Michael Jordan that no one else saw. And I've known Sonny for 40 years. And I thought I knew the Jordan story. And certainly, people that have watched the movie "Air" think they understand it. But that's a version, that's a dramatic version. The true story is just so rich, and it's so detailed, which is so much fun to write because the details are there and the color is there.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Sonny, what did you see in Michael Jordan? I mean, it seems so obvious to all of us now, but what did you see in him back then?
VACCARO: A, I can't explain it. I saw 17 seconds of him making a shot against Georgetown, to beat Georgetown, which was my favorite team. You know, they were wearing Nikes. Michael Jordan wasn't. I didn't know Michael Jordan. He wasn't the best high school player in North Colina. I remember 17 seconds.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Jordy to Black. The time, 18. Shot. Jordan.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Michael Jordan, 14 seconds.
VACCARO: Now, you can't explain why I remembered it in 1984, after all the other things. And I never talked to him in my life until I met him at the restaurant. So this is one of those improbable moments in my life, and I've had a few of them, A.
MARTÍNEZ: Well, Sonny, you know, I've talked to athletes, Sonny, that have been to your camp, right? And one of the things that they remember most of all is that they knew they were good basketball players. Some of them even thought they were great high school basketball players. But I don't know if they necessarily understood what their value was, like, you know, what they meant to a larger organization like the NCAA or professional sports eventually. I think that's what I think they got out of your camp, maybe more than just competing against other elite talent, in that they realized, hey, I have value that I need to be able to take advantage of.
VACCARO: Well, they didn't know, A, because there was nothing in the system that told them their value. Everybody had another idea of what these 15, 16, 17-year-old phenoms - would be in their particular field - of what they could do. Now, let me say the thing here. The only thing that we didn't understand all those years was these SOBs were denying them the right of a human being to earn what they produced.
MARTÍNEZ: Sonny, I'm wondering, when you met Kobe Bryant - now, Kobe is also a kid from Pennsylvania. When you met Kobe Bryant, what did you see in him that maybe others didn't?
VACCARO: Well, I only met him because his father played in my all-star game. His mother's brothers played in my all-star in 1971 and '72. So I had a connection with the family. And then all of a sudden, you know, 18, 20 years later, he walks into my camp with his parents. So when I saw him at the camp for the first time, it wasn't a Jordan moment. It was what he said after the camp. He's a young man. Yeah, he's a junior, going to be a junior through another year at camp. And he walks over to me. And, you know, he thanks me for, you know, inviting him. I appreciate it. And he says, I want to apologize. I said, well, why? He said, well, I'm going to tell you, I didn't win the MVP. Next year, I'm going to win the MVP.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
VACCARO: Next year being his senior year, A. But that's what I saw about Kobe Bryant. And he did it. And his whole life, God forbid, his whole short life - his whole life did that. He was sure of everything he did on that court.
MARTÍNEZ: Sonny, there has been reporting on you in articles, in documentaries, even a Hollywood feature film. Matt Damon played you in the movie "Air." But as far as I've been following your career, this is the first time that you've ever told your story. So why now and why did it take so long?
VACCARO: I'm 85 years old.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
VACCARO: I don't know how much time God's giving me. But this is the only time I could've told it, the end result.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Armen, I'll pose this to you, considering as you mentioned earlier that I think sometimes people think they know the Sonny Vaccaro story.
KETEYIAN: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: What will they get out of this book that maybe they didn't know or will clarify things?
KETEYIAN: This is his view of his life. It's one of the few lives that really deserves this kind of a memoir. Because when you think about these chapters, whether it's Jordan or Kobe - and there's a wildly entertaining chapter on Lebron called the Betrayal in Malibu - all these moments that you think you understand and you think you know, and then you read this book and you go, oh, so that's how it happened. So that's what his relationship was like with Phil Knight or George Raveling or Lebron, or Jordan - you name them. I mean, you know, legends. That's why the book is called "Legends And Soles." These are legendary figures, and Sonny has had a remarkable life with so many of them.
MARTÍNEZ: Sonny Vaccaro and Armen Keteyian are the authors of "Legends And Soles: The Memoir Of An American Original." Sonny, Armen, thank you very much.
KETEYIAN: Thank you.
VACCARO: Thank you. Thank you very much, A.
(SOUNDBITE OF HANDBOOK'S "JANUARY 1ST") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
