It's gotta be the shoes.

The Nike Air Jor­dan 3 Black Cat … This shoe fright­ened me when it first came out in 1988. It looked like it had arrived from out­er space, which made it absolute­ly the per­fect shoe for Jor­dan to wear when he was just begin­ning to dom­i­nate the NBA. His game was threat­en­ing. These shoes were so sleek, so — it must be said — fierce, that a kid knew that he need­ed to step up his game in order to be wor­thy of them. I'm cur­rent­ly total­ly riv­et­ed by the exten­sive Air Jor­dan doc­u­men­ta­tion and com­men­tary on the web. For instance, here's a killer 8‑minute video pro­file of Tin­ker Hat­field, the genius behind the Jor­dan line. Nobody in the world can cov­er my main man, Michael Jor­dan … Impos­si­ble! Impos­si­ble! Impos­si­ble! Imposs-!