Air Jordan VII, Air Jordan 7

After the fantastic ‘90-‘91 season, it could only get better for Michael Jordan and the Bulls. It was now time to put up the US Olympic team that would go and compete at the Barcelona Olympics.

Michael, wearing the number 9 on his T-shirt, and his “Dream Team” of 1992 went on and won the final match against Angola at 116-48 and received the gold medal. Wearing the Air Jordan VII, Michael also earned his second MVP award in his carrier.

The seventh sneaker in the Air Jordan line was designed by none other than Tinker Hatfield. While he was working on it, Michael sad down with him and said he wanted the shoe to “stay young and interesting, while remaining sophisticated”.

The technological revolution this shoe introduced was the new Huarache technology that allowed manufacturing a shoe that molded perfectly on your foot and stuck there.

The shoe was also much lighter than previous models, making it easier to take up speed and jump.

A thing one can say about Tinker is that he can get inspiration from anything. All the lines on the Air Jordan 7 were influenced by Western African tribal patterns, which he found on a poster promoting Afro pop music in Portland.

What made many Air Jordan customers frown was the fact that the visible air sole, the Nike Air logo and the sole that would turn yellow after a while were now gone. Well, things are supposed to evolve. The sneaker also featured a neoprene sock liner which was the first of its kind.

For the Olympic event, Nike released the Air Jordan 7 in a special “Olympic” color way, made of the official Olympic colors and Michael Jordan wore them and brought back a gold medal for the United States. Also, the now familiar number 23 on the back was replaced with 9 to correspond with the Jordan’s number in the Dream Team.

Of all Air Jordans, the AJ VII was definitely the most controversial, being both acclaimed and hated by its buyers. Most previous models were criticized for something, but the scale of the criticism for the Air Jordan 7 was unprecedented. It probably had to do with the fact that by now Michael Jordan was an international superstar and the audience these shoes got was larger than ever.

And speaking of audience, the Air Jordan 7 was supported by a marketing campaign in which Michael Jordan was joined by new other than Bugs Bunny. They would once again star in the movie “Space Jam” four years later. Thanks to this campaign, the sneaker was nicknamed “the Buggs”.

Air Jordan 7 Retro

Despite the love/hate relationship with its customers, the AJ 7 has many fans and each of its retro releases receive lots of attention.

The first Air Jordan 7 Retro was released in 2002 in two color combination. For the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Nike released a retro in Olympic color ways.

In 2006 they released the Air Jordan VII retro in White/Black-Cardinal color combination, along with three other combinations.

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