There are few nicknames in sports that have been more fitting than Kobe Bryant and the “Black Mamba,” but five years before Bryant adopted that nickname, Nike tried to give it to Michael Jordan.
In a fascinating new feature, ESPN’s Baxter Holmes dove into how Nike created an entire ad campaign for the Air Jordan 19 around the black mamba to highlight the Tech Flex material that resembled snake skin. They were going to compare the black mamba’s speed and deadly strike to Jordan on the court. The campaign even went public briefly, including a two-page print ad in a 2004 issue of ESPN the Magazine, but never appeared again at the request of Jordan.
The reason? Jordan is apparently terrified of snakes, but didn’t want that to be public knowledge.
“He was terrified,” ‘Rare Air’ author Mark Vancil once reported. “If you watched TV with him and a snake came on, he’d change the channel. And [Jordan] goes, ‘If you write that, somebody’s going to get killed because somebody’s going to throw a snake one day.'”
Jordan’s phobia of snakes meant the campaign and any plans to dub him the black mamba were killed, and they pivoted away.
A few years later, Bryant took on the “Black Mamba” moniker and ran with it — as the story goes, he was inspired by watching the black mamba scene in Kill Bill Vol. 2 — turning it into one of the all-time great nicknames in sports.
The organic nature of Bryant’s embrace of being the Black Mamba made it work as a nickname, and the timeline backs up it being a mere coincidence. The Black Mamba was first referenced in relation to Kobe in an ESPN profile of Bryant in 2005 and then in the famous SLAM cover with Bryant in 2006, only becoming part of Nike’s campaign with him in 2007.
Ultimately, it all worked out for all parties. By 2002, Jordan was not in need of a new nickname and he’s certainly not had any problems selling shoes without it. Bryant, on the other hand, was able to turn the Black Mamba into not just a nickname but his alter ego on the court — going so far as to hiss like a snake when he wanted the ball.
Still, it’s a truly wild “what if?” in the basketball and sneaker world if Jordan hadn’t been terrified of snakes and had taken the Black Mamba nickname for himself, years before Bryant.
