Michael Jordan's first game-worn shoes in the NBA will go to SCP Auctions' online auction on April 8. The pair of Nike basketball sneakers is purportedly the first one that the six-time NBA champion wore in 1984.
Khalid Ali, who worked as a ballboy in the 1984-85 season for the Los Angeles Lakers, has submitted the pair of Nike sneakers to SCP Auctions. Ali claims that Jordan handed him the shoes following the Chicago Bulls' game versus the Lakers on Dec. 2, 1984.
Ali, fifteen years old at the time, clearly recalls asking Jordan if he could receive the shoes that Jordan was wearing during warm-ups. They were the signature red, white, and black sneakers that would later become the first Nike Air Jordans.
However, Jordan informed Ali that the former would be switching to a run-of-the-mill pair of Nike shoes, according to Sporting News. The white pair of shoes contained a red Nike swoosh.
After the game, Ali entered the locker room of the Bulls and asked Jordan if he could have his game-worn shoes. Jordan agreed, and even autographed the pair of basketball sneakers.
Collectors "obsess" over game-won Jordan shoes, said Dan Imler, vice president of SCP Auctions. That is what adds huge value to the first pair that the world's first billionaire athlete wore in an NBA game.
Imler believes that the sneakers could draw bids of more than $50,000, according to ESPN. In 2013, a pair of shoes that Jordan wore during the "Flu Game" sold for $104,765, setting a record for any sport's game-worn shoes.
Ali explained that while the shoes were stored for three decades in his mother's closet he did not talk about them "much." Interestingly, the 1984 Lakers would go on to win the NBA title, but the Jordan shoes are the only collectibles Ali secured as a ballboy that season.
Nike paid Jordan $500,000 per year to wear its shoes for five years. By May 1985 Nike had sold $70 million worth of $65 Air Jordans.