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The ‘90s Chicago Bulls are rightfully remembered as the kings of a golden age of professional basketball. During their unprecedented run of six championships in eight years, some of the greatest players of multiple generations shared the same court, the NBA experienced a financial boom, and the league’s star became arguably the most famous person in the world. All this and more is captured in unprecedented detail ESPN’s new ten-part docuseries The Last Dance.
It is slightly less widely known that the Bulls were the face of another golden age. For a period spanning from the late ‘80s through the late ‘90s—from the beginning, essentially, of Michael Jordan’s rise to fame until his second retirement—can also be remembered as the utopic period of sports merchandise. During these halcyon days, some of the most innovative, diverse, and covetable sports apparel was produced by a whole range of actors, both big and small. No team seemed to benefit from this merch boom more than the Jordan-era Bulls; no team fueled this boom quite like Jordan’s Bulls. A cursory look online will produce all kinds of Bulls-related odds and ends — a 1996 Bulls commemorative pewter mug, a Michael Jordan watch, this 1993 championship T-shirt that looks like a Marvel comic.
It goes without saying that the wealth of covetable Bulls artifacts available today is a byproduct of their immense popularity, sharp branding, and highly marketable roster. But the story of ‘90s Bulls merchandise unfolded hand-in-hand with another story—one about the freer, more diverse sports apparel environment that produced them. What can we say? It was the '90s.
The League-Approved Alternative: Michael Jordan Magic Johnson T’s
If you grew up in the age of LeBron, Kobe, and NBA2K, it can be hard to imagine a time when the NBA wasn’t everywhere. It can be difficult to conceive of a moment where companies like Nike and Adidas, wouldn’t be willing to shell out a billion dollars for the league’s exclusive apparel rights. As vintage seller Will Wagner of DeepCoverNY explained to me, that moment did exist, and it wasn’t so long ago: the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
“In the ‘90s, companies were less concerned with buying out [their competitors] than they were with being their own successful sports brand,” Wagner said. “This left room for so many brands to try and do something that other brands hadn’t done yet.” In place of one giant company with an official NBA merchandising license making all the gear was a constellation of smaller ones, all trying to top one another. Many of these now-defunct companies include names your dad might remember: Logo Athletic, Logo 7, Nutmeg Mills, and Lee Sport.
Another such company was Magic Johnson T’s. Ever the entrepreneur, the then-Lakers star started an apparel company seemingly meant to capitalize on the era’s penchant for loud design. The results were some of the most stylistically ambitious official NBA gear ever made. This T-shirt is one a handful of similar Michael Jordan Magic Johnson T’s available online—and references the Bulls star’s second jump speed years before Zion Williamson was even a thought in his parents’ minds.
Adventures in Licensing: The Michael Jordan Wilson Watch
Six rings aside, Michael Jordan will perhaps be best remembered as the first professional athlete to build an internationally successful brand around his own name and likeness. According to Forbes, Jordan Brand hauled in a mammoth $3.14 billion in global revenue in the 2019 fiscal year. And as rare as it is now to see Jordan’s heavily-trademarked name and face not next to a Swoosh™ or Jumpman™, this wasn’t always the case.
Exhibit A: This Michael Jordan Wilson watch. In 1988, a 25-year-old Jordan agreed to an eight-year, $25 million contract extension with the Chicago Bulls. Even adjusted to 2020 dollars, this is pennies compared to what many of the league’s biggest stars make today. However, with the help of his agent David Falk, Jordan supplemented this income with a number of lucrative endorsement deals. One such deal was with Chicago-based sports apparel and equipment maker Wilson. A smattering of Wilson promotional materials and products from the late 80s that feature Jordan’s name and likeness (but noticeably no Chicago Bulls or NBA branding) can be found across the web. In the age of exclusive rights and lifetime deals, it’s almost unfathomable to think of a player of Jordan’s immense stature collecting sponsorships like a NASCAR driver, much less with a non-Nike sports apparel brand, but the NBA wasn’t yet the cash cow it is today. It had only just become the world’s fastest growing sport.
Official Goods: The Replica Jersey
Even with a range of companies producing a whole variety of official NBA apparel, there were still some industry standards. To my mind, at least, the most iconic piece of ‘90s NBA merch is the Champion replica jersey. From 1990 to 1997, the North Carolina sportswear manufacturer was the official uniform provider for every NBA team, and from 1991 to 2002, it was the league’s sole official replica maker. If you own a basketball jersey from that era, it’s likely Champion.
In recent years, the brand has experienced somewhat of a resurgence, becoming huge hit with a new wave of the vintage-crazed and Urban Outfitted. Luckily, you can save yourself a trip to the mall. Jerseys like this mid-90s Pippen one can be found in abundance through online resellers. (For a certified vintage option, try the Mitchell & Ness throwback above.
A Match Made in Beaverton: Nike and the Bulls
These days, Nike is the largest sports apparel company on the planet, with a reach perhaps even greater than its $39.1 billion in 2019 global sales would suggest. And the company’s current popularity has only made its vintage items more covetable.
As Nick F., one of the proprietors of LA-based vintage dealer MOMnDAD explained to me, the online Nike hive is deep and detail-oriented. “Tags matter in vintage. People see that red Nike Air swoosh and it’s all the difference.” Nike collectors obviously have affinity for the rare stuff, but they are also attracted to the period’s most iconic pieces—and, obviously, many of the most iconic items from the '90s involved the most iconic team of that decade.
At one point, all three of the Bulls biggest stars—Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and of course Michael Jordan—were Nike-affiliated athletes, and the creatives in Beaverton wasted no time creating cool gear for their most famous brand ambassadors. This Scottie Pippen t-shirt was made for a youth basketball camp in Portland, Oregon and features a special graphic by illustrator Chris Gall. The Rodman tee, like almost anything ‘90s Rodman (see below), is one of the more coveted vintage Nike items, thanks in part to a unique attribute: it was originally sold in a number of colorways to mimic the two-time All Star's subject-to-change hair color. The Nike Air Jordan “He’s Back” shirt, meanwhile, commemorates the shocking two-word fax Jordan sent in March 1995, announcing his return to the NBA after his first retirement. Three of the era’s biggest stars, working with the era’s most iconic brand, and they all just happen to be teammates: how's that for corporate synergy?
As the Worm Turns: The Joy of Vintage Dennis Rodman Gear
While Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were huge draws, Dennis Rodman existed in his own orbit. When you’re a front-facing member of one of the most popular and lucrative franchises in the world, everyone wants a piece of you. When you’re a front-facing member of one of the most popular and lucrative franchises in the world and you appeared on the back cover of your New York Times bestselling autobiography like this, you’re a golden goose.
After a standout first season in Chicago that saw “The Worm” pull down a league-leading 14.9 rebounds per game, help lift the Bulls to their fourth title, and break things off with Madonna, MTV came knocking. In the winter of 1996, The Rodman World Tour premiered on the network. The loosely structured talk show, which ran for one 13-episode season, trailed the NBA star through various cities on one seemingly random, hedonistic, and hedonistically random journey after another. Segments included: cruising down the Las Vegas Strip with Jenny McCarthy, playing tennis with Jon Lovitz at The Malibu Racquet Club, and kissing Kelsey Grammer on the lips, among other things.
As far as ‘90s sports figures go, these strange forays into pop culture were...unique. So was the merch that accompanied them. This Champion t-shirt was one of a number of items sold around the show. A trove of official and unofficial Rodman gear from the period exists online, and new important paraphernalia continues to be discovered every day. Rodman, of course, wasn’t alone in his pursuit of off-the court media exposure. That same year, his more-famous teammate starred in a major production of his own.
The Bootleg Bulls
There is perhaps no greater indication of a cultural phenomenon’s relevance than the range and depth of counterfeit material that blooms around it: remember the fake Yeezy storefront that reportedly opened in Wenzhou, China? The Jordan-era Bulls slightly predate the manic streetwear age, but they inspired a similarly fervent knockoff culture. But according to Will Wagner, the aim of most 90s bootleggers differed slightly from today’s fakesters.
“What’s cool about bootleg T-shirts from the ‘90s is that [each one] was someone’s own, individual creation,” he explained to me. “Today, [bootleggers] try to make them so close to the official stuff that you can’t even tell. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was just about taking an iconic image and putting it on a T-shirt with some other cool, iconic images.”
This was the governing logic of “Bootleg Bart”—an '80s wave that saw bootleg T-shirt makers recast the snarky Simpsons character in the role of a range of pop-cultural archetypes, including: an anti-apartheid advocate, a soldier in the Gulf War, and a certain star shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls. Being turned into a Bart Simpson t-shirt was a de facto certificate of notoriety. Judging by the Screen Stars Best tag here (a Fruit of the Loom-owned brand that produced cheap blank T-shirts popular among independent screen printers at the time), this “Air Bart” shirt dates back to the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, right at the beginning of the Bulls’s ascendency.
Similarly, showing up in the world of Rap Tees was a mark of cultural cache. This brand of bootleg, identified by bold and typically large centered graphics, have their origins in the ‘80s hip hop concert world. This 1996 version features a montage of the Bulls triumvirate, along with head coach Phil Jackson, superimposed over four larger-than-life championship rings, and looks more like a Pen & Pixel album cover than something you'd score at the United Center. Shirts like these were unique, necessarily small-batch, and probably originally sold in arena parking lots. Today, they go for hundreds to thousands of dollars on resale sites like Grailed and are worn by people performing inside the arena like Travis Scott.
Perhaps the best way to contextualize the vintage Bulls merch universe is to reflect on how much has changed in the years since. At the end of the 1997-98 season, the Chicago front office broke up the band, and an era officially came to a close. Almost simultaneously, the sports-apparel dynamics of the NBA began to shift. Many of the smaller companies that thrived in Jordan's heyday were purchased by large corporations. By 2005 Reebok was the exclusive apparel partner of the league (not long after that, Reebok would be purchased by an even bigger corporation). Today, the fruits of that special window exist mostly as digital memories scattered across the internet. The Last Dance may be over, but for as cheap as $24.99 you can relive the party.