I don't believe another VIII would have dropped, as Mike was wear-testing the IX in the 1993 playoffs and they were produced in time to drop in Nov. 1993. Keep in mind MJ had just retired in October.
Nike’s normal release setup would’ve generally had one more version of the 8’s release in the fall of ‘93 with the new model debuting the following spring…But have to keep in mind that Mike was telling people behind the scenes as early as late ‘92 that he was thinking of retiring, or outright that he was finished after the ‘93 season…
Nike higher ups were fairly convinced that once Mike was gone then people wouldn’t be willing to buy “new” shoes the athlete endorsed…There was no set precedent for that at the time…Really the only sneakers they knew people would be willing to buy from retired basketball players was older models that they’d worn while playing in their prime ~Puma Clyde / Suede, Converse All Star ~ for example…This is why they hastily told Tinker to stop designing “new” Jordan models and the focus quietly shifted to re-releasing older Jordan sneakers…Tinker of course continued work on what would become the 10’s on his own as kind of a tribute shoe to MJ (List of career achievements on the outsole)…
Issue was that they were stuck with the 9’s since they’d already spent money to develop the shoes and in fact had already started early production…As a result they shifted the normal release routine and bumped the 9’s up to the fall of 1993 likely hoping that they could still garner sales on Mike’s “new” model, that they’d already all that money on, even though he wasn’t an active NBA athlete…The 8’s got cut and those production resources got shifted to the 9’s…The sooner they released the shoes the fresher Mike “The Basketball Star” would be on people’s minds…Again it was new territory for the sneaker world…They needed to speed up the debut of the 9’s so they wouldn’t lose out on the money they’d already spent on them, and they might be able to capitalize on Mike’s name while this ~ shocking surprise retirement ~ was still fresh…Nike, not being one’s to miss a possible NEW marketing strategy even had the Steve Martin commercial campaign that showed Mike STILL playing basketball under various aliases…They were worried Mike “the basketball player” would slip from people’s minds, clearly…
The 9’s sold, and they sold well…Meanwhile the re-release or what they called the “retro” models hit deep discounts…Basically exact opposite what Nike execs initially expected to happen…All the kids wanted MJ’s “new” sneaker for Christmas of 1993 so their play to capitalize on MJ while he was still was still fresh on people’s minds worked…
All this is why the 8’s had only three colorways to actually release and a lifespan that lasted from February ‘93 to May ‘93, far shorter than any other Jordan model…If not for Mike retiring there for sure would’ve been at least one more colorway of the 8’s to release and the 9’s wouldn’t have debuted until early 1994…
But it all worked out for everybody…Tinker got to continue working on “new” Jordan models…The new Jordan signature got shifted from the traditional spring (All Star Game) release to the fall (Start of the NBA Season) release that would continue all the way all the way to the 16’s which shifted back to the early in the year…Plus we wouldn’t have gotten you’re favorite model (13’s) if the 9’s didn’t land like they did…So the last 8’s colorway, whatever it would’ve been, getting cut was for the greater good
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…Plus MJ’s retirement took at least one more colorway off the table…
I still think something close to this is what he would have worn the first half of that 93/94 season.
fdub
said…
) show the pricing differences…Notice “full length Air-Sole unit” in the description for the 12’s, while the Pippen 2’s and Jumpman Pro’s specifically say “Zoom Air”…
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