The Air Jordan XI is arguably Michael Jordan’s most popular and most coveted shoe of all time. Originals — in mint condition — are tough to track down (brag alert: yours truly has a black/red pair), and if you are lucky enough to find them, cost an arm and a leg. Even buying a recent retro on eBay will cost you significantly more than face value. Even tougher to find? Game-worn XIs. Tougher than that? Game-worn XIs from the 1996 NBA Finals.
Eric Snow is a proud owner of one pair of this so-called “Holy Grail”, thanks to being a rookie on the Seattle Supersonics team that made the 1996 NBA Finals — a team that faced the unenviable task of taking on the 72-10 Chicago Bulls. From Sports Illustrated‘s Ben Golliver:
Jordan and the Bulls were at the peak of their powers in 1995-96, winning an NBA-record 72 games and capturing the fourth title of Jordan’s Hall of Fame career. A 32-year-old Jordan was named MVP and Finals MVP that year — Jordan’s first full campaign after returning from his stint playing professional baseball — and the Bulls would go on to win championships in each of the next two seasons.
Chicago defeated Seattle 108-86 in Game 3 of the 1996 Finals to take a 3-0 series lead. Jordan finished with a game-high 36 points (on 11-for-23 shooting), five assists, three rebounds and two steals in 41 minutes. The game was played on June 9, 1996, in Seattle.
Golliver mentions Game 3 because that’s the game the shoes are from (Jordan gave them to Snow in the locker room afterwards). It was the only game in the series that Jordan scored more than 30 points, a performance that prompted Defensive Player of the Year Gary Payton to guard the league’s MVP (Jordan, by his standards, had miserable Games 4, 5 and 6).
Grey Flannel Auctions is running the auction, which started with an opening bid of $5,000 (current bid, as of this writing: $6,655). Grey Flannel ran a similar auction last fall for the signed game-worn XIIs from Jordan’s famous “Flu Game” in the 1997 Finals. They sold for $104,765 — a price these XIs definitely won’t fetch, even though it is a much better shoe.
[SI]
