Written by Ian Stonebrook
On August 23rd, a classic returns, but not one of conventional senses.
The Air Jordan 1 Retro High “Shattered Backboard” – inspired by a 1985 incident in Italy and birthed 30 years later as a limited launch – still soars as equal parts iconic and unexpected just as the sum of its parts suggest.
Released for the first and only time in 2015, the glass breaking color-way cut through a fragmented footwear market. A space that was reasoning with expanded interest as forward-thinking fashion put pressure on untamed nostalgia.
Anticipating an Air Jordan 1 High style revival while stepping outside the box of only original ‘85 endorsed colorways, Jordan Brand brought out an archival story – one that would be classified a tall-tale from MJ truthers if not for YouTube uploads – that flipped the most important basketball shoe ever made into an educational canvas for Rebellion 101.
As the seminal “Shattered Backboard” returns in true-to-form styling, it’s an answered prayer for those that still have their OG pairs on ice, those that wore theirs to the grown, and those who caught an L ten years prior.
It’s also a chance to raise questions and the stakes on just why this shoe happened in the first place and just how it advanced an entire generation of sneaker savants.
Lucky for you, JD Sports has the answers and the shoes.
Why was Michael Jordan playing exhibition basketball in Italy?
An autograph from Michael Jordan on memorabilia might raise the value of your mancave. An autograph from Michael Jordan on a contract will shatter glass ceilings.
Entering the NBA as No. 3 pick out of North Carolina with an Olympic Gold Medal and NCAA Championship to his name, Mike Jordan leaped over all his pro peers before playing a game by signing a $2.5 million endorsement deal with NIke, making his annual average income off sneakers roughly 5x that of basketball’s best at the time.
The big bet between Phil Knight and Deloris Jordan engineered by Sonny Vaccaro, David Falk, and Rob Strasser changed sportswear forever, effectively making MJ the type of hooper turned shoe salesman not even Chuck Taylor could imagine.
Sure, Bob Cousy could sell cigarettes and Julius Erving could tout toothpaste, but no one was putting truth to the power of a product like Air Jordan turning sneakers into launch pads. In his inaugural NBA season – in which he was an All-Star Game starter and Dunk Contest finalist – MJ turned scoring into sorcery and marketing to defiance.
On the court, a landslide Rookie of the Year race saw Jordan nearly tripling top pick Hakeem Olujawon in votes. Off the court, a retail debut with Nike – the company that paid the unproven Tar Heel 5x more than Moses Malone or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar earned – was even more lopsided in success.
The Air Jordan line did 42x expectations in 1985, making MJ the man not just in Chicago but on Madison Avenue. Kids and adults across America were buying out Air Jordans literally hand over fist.
Clocking the unprecedented Stateside success, Nike decided it was time to market Michael globally, years before basketball ever sold such a star. An exhibition game in Italy between premier programs was an easy way to endure MJ and Nike to Europe in action.
It was all fun and games designed to sell shoes, so why was the man of the hour breaking backboards in Trieste?
The hoop version of a futbol friendly set the table for an unlikely matchup between Jordan and basketball’s most known unknown: Oscar Schmidt, a Brazilian baller considered as the GOAT by those born in South America and those that had to guard him.
Adding together professional and international play, Schmidt would serve as the sport’s all-time leading scorer for nearly 30 years.
Perhaps, Michael took this personally.
Refusing to transfer teams at halftime, Jordan dueled Schmidt’s squad to the tune of 41 points in an OT win. When throwing down a windmill dunk that broke the backboard and caused a delay in the game, the 6’9 forward from Brazil used the English he knew to compliment his American rival.
“I said to him, ‘You are not from the earth,'” Schmidt recalled on a 2024 episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. “He responded, ‘You, too.'”
Game recognizes game and the exhibition only added to the brand and the baller’s folklore.
Within a year, global Air Jordan sales eclipsed $100 million with Europe ascending as a key market. Mark Parker and Bruce Kilgore returned to Italy shortly after the trip, using the country’s premium craftsmanship as the calling card for the Air Jordan 2.
Soon, the Air Jordan line would be synonymous with not just dunking but luxury fashion regarded around the globe. The Air Jordan 2 would aptly be made in Italy, paving the way for a quality standard and worldly approach to production all needed to ascend and sell the greatest athlete the game had ever seen.
Following the backboard breaking exhibition in Trieste, Air Jordans would move by the millions for ten years straight, losing momentum only when Mike retired before returning in 1995.
In that brief absence, Nike had no certainty he would ever come back, unable to book Air Jordan 10s in Europe and uncertain if they could create new models made for Mike.
So, why do Retro Jordans exist?
In the mid 90s, Nike needed to honor MJ’s legacy at a time when the line turned ten and it appeared he’d be done with basketball forever. Over the course of 1994 and 1995, the Air Jordan 1, Air Jordan 2, and Air Jordan 3 returned to the market.
They also returned to crickets.
At the time, looking backwards baffled fans who bought into Air Jordan on the grounds of performance innovation – and Mike actively wearing them. When Mike called it quits for the second time in 1999 and the newly minted Jordan Brand subsidiary aimed to expand lanes and eras, a second run of retro releases were met more with open arms.
Still, said success was only seen in original colorways. With the exception of unarguable updates like 2001’s “Cool Grey” Air Jordan 11 Retro or 2005’s “Altitude” Air Jordan 13 Retro, new takes on old favorites fell flat with Day 1 consumers due to being devoid of storytelling and easy to spot MJ inspiration.
Younger fans more interested in expression than history were open to rocking Retro+ renditions or L’Style colors that were wild and oriented towards fashion, but many Day 1 fans saw the expansion of shades as only a vehicle to push clothing and expand output.
By the early 2010s, the average age of a sneaker head began to dip and the market started to widen. The scoffed at retro releases of the early aughts had grown in favor even if OG colorways still mattered most.
As the decade approached its midway marker, the table was suddenly set for a non-OG Air Jordan to turn the tables on collecting once again. That shoe would be 2015’s “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1.
But what made an orange AJ1 – in a sea of retro releases – cut through and become a cult classic?
A decade ago, sneaker culture was as diverse, democratized, and up for grabs as it’s ever been.
The Three Stripes had its most motion since the days of Run-DMC or T-Mac, unveiling the Yeezy range and turning the Ultra Boost into an everyday standard. Nike Basketball lost its grip on covetable colorways with Flyknit forays and elevated NikeLab launches made to circumvent menswear.
Jordan Brand, turning 30 years old and living less off the holiday hype of the Air Jordan 11, was at a turning point. Remastered Retros – a program putting a premium on shape and quality control – gave old sneakers a new narrative for fans from way back. Additionally, a restored interest in the Air Jordan 1 was enough to sell out OG colorways.
Still, there was a fine line between paying homage to the past and living in it.
Without warning, the Air Jordan 1 “Shattered Backboard” changed all of that.
Every so often, a shoe releases that both reinvents the wheel on what’s considered cool and restores order in what’s to be expected. The “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 High Retro raised the stakes on craftsmanship and opened the gates for consumer base and colorways.
For kids too young to have ever read NikeTalk, the “Shattered Backboard” release’s premium leather made Millennials and Gen Z buyers feel like the same sneaker sommeliers who’d once boxed them out. For Baby Boomer and Generation X office types too shy to pull off patent leather or elephant print, the menswear indoctrination of the Air Jordan 1 was enough to feel rebellious when worn with a button down and a collared shirt.
But for the truest heads? The “Shattered Backboard” 1 was a paradigm shifting color story unseen since the “Cool Grey” 11s fourteen years prior. The difference was this time it was rooted in real MJ history – a knock against most Retro+ and LS releases of the ’00s – and it was made better than any Air Jordan 1 fans of any age had seen in over 20 years.
If you knew, you noticed. But as said, no one was warned.
Let me get this straight, the shoes revived sneaker culture but weren’t subject to campouts, riots, or even over the top marketing?
It’s important to note that the Air Jordan 1 “Shattered Backboard” – while limited – was not originally a siren for hype.
Shock drops did not inflate the market value of said shoe prior to its retail release on June 27, 2015 nor did influencer marketing leading up to the launch position the shoe as a status symbol.
Heck, do your Googles and most major media outlets did not even place the “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 on their Sneaker of the Year lists in December of 2015.
Like the Song of the Summer, the “Shattered Backboard” 1 was the shoe sneaker culture chose, not necessarily the one that was fed to them. They made the story their story — something kids couldn’t claim for the OG Jordans before them.
By the creative minds at Jordan Brand threading a needle between a fabled exhibition incident, the game’s black and orange uniforms, and mounting menswear hype for the shoe that intersected it all, there was no way to gatekeep a moment that only hundreds of lucky fans in Italy were on sight to see.
Furthermore, the archival jersey worn by the high-flying hero of 1985 was cosmically in dialogue with marketplace movement and hip-hop energy 30 years later.
Released in the advent of resale and in a major year for the color orange – the height of VLONE and The Life of Pablo album cover and merch – the “Shattered Backboard” 1 became synonymous with style, taste, and reverence for collecting. A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, Travis Scott and even Tyler, the Creator all co-signed the shoe.
While sneaker collecting can be a mix of scoring the coveted OGs or keeping up with constant collabs, the “Shattered Backboard” 1 defied history or flavor of the month hotness and ended up being one of the culture’s best slow burns. Not only did it heat up the Air Jordan 1 as a whole, it created a seismic wave in more ways than one.
In short order, the “Shattered Backboard” 1s would span multiple sequels in theme and take the Starfish shade to retro releases of all varieties. Jordan Brand would go back to the international exhibition well by bringing out other reactive retros tied to MJ’s marketing exploits when playing pickup overseas.
Most notably, the “Shattered Backboard” 1s would open the floodgates for non-OG Air Jordan 1 hype, as endless variants of the timeless original would release to dramatic fanfare in colors never worn or released in its inaugural run. For the entire back half of the 2010s and into the 2020s, the model Mike made famous first in 1985 was once again soaring over all competition.
Still, the “Shattered Backboard” 1 itself occupied rarified air itself no matter how many homages. It lived on as a signifier for those that knew they were the one before the world at large caught up.
But now that there is hype, can the “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 Retro High possibly speak to collectors the way it did a decade ago?
Ten years later, the shoe picked by the people is now available for the people at JD Sports. Much like 2015, sneaker culture is incredibly diverse and thanks to launches like this one even more inclusive.
For fans young and old, the “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 Retro High is a walking, living, breathing account of sneaker history that speaks to five different decades and two separate hemispheres. It’s a rare relic in modern memory where the hype came after the launch, evoking the idea that you had taste and foresight for what was classic, now, and next all at once.
No brand, influencer, or campaign had to tell you the “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 was cool – and they still don’t. Even after all these years it’s a familiar flex for those that were down in 2015, realizing a tipping point in sneaker culture in real time.
And for those today that are new to the game?
It’s a savvy start to any collection and a conversation starter that spans eras.
Respected by OGs, Gen Zs, hoop heads, and style savvy shoppers alike, the Air Jordan 1 “Shattered Backboard” is a testament to the shoe that changed everything. Not only did it break the rules and reset cool, it restored the standard in sneaker culture all over again.
