By Roland Lazenby
Little, Brown and Company
720 pages
"As with the others who had helped create the cultural icon who became MJ, [former sports marketing executive] Sonny Vacaro often marveled at the breadth of Jordan's reach and popularity. 'Prior to Michael no one had ever been marketed the way we marketed him,' Vacaro said. 'And no one ever put as much emphasis on an individual athlete to sell a product.'
"By 1999, Jordan stood alone at the pinnacle of a sports-hero mythologizing culture. How deep was his global penetration? The Financial Review would express great surprise in December 1999 upon learning that as early as 1992, a survey of Chinese schoolchildren had named Jordan one of the two greatest figures of the twentieth century, along with Zhou Enlai, the longtime Chinese premier. That was a good five years before the making of 'Space Jam,' and well before Jordan's legend had gained its most serious momentum with his first 'retirement,' the public fervor of his comeback, and the winning of his final three championships in storybook fashion.
" 'The nomination of Jordan seems bizarre,' the Financial Review noted, 'except that black sporting and athletic achievement provides some of the defining images of the twentieth century.' "
