SOLE COLLECTOR: Sneakers

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Key Tech: Encapsulated Air-Sole unit (heel)

Use: Hoops, Indoor and Outdoor

Position: Only for the brave or dimwitted

Colorway Tested: White/Metallic Silver/Midnight Navy

Price: $100 for Retro + (the O.G. retailed for $65)

Pros: Generally comfortable for off-court wear; generally good fit around the rearfoot; tremendous court feel (but only because there’s pretty much no midsole material under the ball of the foot); wickedly good traction; light

Cons: Midsole feels like cardboard under the ball of the foot and starts out rock-hard under the heel; seemingly nonexistent cushioning up front; rough inner becomes increasingly uncomfortable with wear; allows a lot of side-to-side movement within the inner at the forefoot; overly restrictive around the ankle

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HOW THE HELL DID HE WEAR THESE THINGS?!?

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I’m in awe not because the Air Jordan I is horrible. In fact, its design is fundamentally sound and, when viewed against its top-flight peers from the early- to mid-1980s—shoes like the Nike Air Force 1 and Converse Maverick—it’s decent. The reason I’m amazed is that the Air Jordan I was a shoe designed for an era before the arrival of Michael Jordan—an era overflowing with legendary players and deep-rooted rivalries, but one whose rich patina His Airness single-handedly wiped from our collective consciousness in the span of a few seasons.

That’s because Jordan, both literally and figuratively, elevated the game of basketball to a higher plane. There were, of course, a handful of frequent fliers who paved the way for MJ—Elgin Baylor, Connie Hawkins and the majestic Dr. J foremost among them—but Jordan took a quantum leap forward, introducing to the world a level of explosiveness and dynamism that were simply unimaginable back then. And that was the crux of the problem vis-à-vis his footwear—no one could have imagined the extent of MJ’s near super-human abilities, and that list of no ones included Peter Moore, then head of design at Nike, and the man tasked with designing Mr. Jordan’s first shoe (in an interesting twist, Moore soon after became persona non grata at the Swoosh, but that’s another story for another time).

As such, the Air Jordan I was a shoe designed for the older, more earth-bound version of the game that pre-dated Jordan. If you don’t believe me, try a pair of AJ Is on for size and get a load of their cushioning—or rather their near complete lack thereof. Honestly, while playing in the Air Jordan I I could have sworn that there was nothing under my forefoot but a few millimeters of rubber overlaid with a couple of sheets of cardboard. After my first wearing I pondered a demand for hazard pay, but figured that if MJ could wear it for a season-plus, I could wear the Air Jordan I through a handful of games (I was forgetting of course, that the AJ I-shod MJ had broken a bone in his foot just three games into his sophomore season, but more on that in a minute).

As the rock-hard foam in the I’s midsole broke down a bit with wear, the quality of feel under my forefoot improved marginally. But, even then, calling it cushioning would have been an overstatement. The forepart of the AJ I’s midsole seems to exist more as a carrier for the outsole than as a structure to absorb impacts. Cushioning under the heel was a little better, thanks mostly to the Air-Sole unit encapsulated within the rearfoot and the increased midsole thickness necessary to accommodate it. But don’t be thinking that it’s anything like the cushy air-based feel provided by shoes from the 21st Century; feel at the heel is more along the lines of something Fred Flintstone would be familiar with. Still, I preferred it to the cardboard-like feel up front.

I could go into how the inner becomes less and less comfortable the longer you go on playing or how restrictive the shoe feels around the ankle (the original version of the Air Jordan I was actually cut higher than the Retro + version that’s more common today), but the bottom line is that the I is not the shoe to buy if you’re looking for an Air Jordan to play ball in. For one game—maybe two—it might cut it, but if you play more than just a handful of serious full-court games in succession wearing the Air Jordan I, your feet, shins, knees and—depending on your age—back will pay you back with interest for needlessly subjecting them to so much stress.

So how did MJ do it? Well, that’s a good question. For one thing, he was much lighter when he entered the league as a skinny kid from North Carolina back in late 1984. The official site for USA Basketball (the organizers of the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team) has Jordan listed at 199 lbs on the roster for the 1984 gold medal winning team on which he starred. That’s nearly 20 lbs less than Jordan’s “listed” 216 lbs at retirement (I put listed in quotes because his real weight at retirement was almost certainly a good deal higher). He was also, obviously, a young man back then, with a body that could take a lot more abuse.

But, as noted earlier, even at that age and at that weight, something did give three games into Jordan’s second season as a pro: the navicular bone in his left foot. As any Chicago Bulls fan from that era will be able to tell you, that particular bone in MJ’s foot broke, causing him to miss nearly the entire season. Whether a different or better-cushioned shoe would have prevented the injury is impossible to say. My feeling after having spent some time with the Air Jordan I is that more cushioning couldn’t have hurt (no pun intended), but one could rightly ask whether any shoe of that day would have been able to provide Jordan with adequate protection given his freakish abilities. It’s instructive to remember too, that he did eventually come back to score 63-points against an awesome Boston Celtics team in the first round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs while wearing those same Air Jordan Is.

So, this is a debatable point, but what isn’t debatable is that the Air Jordan I’s time, at least from a performance perspective, has long since passed. It certainly still carries a ton of sentimental value, but sentiment doesn’t count for much once the whistle blows (that, and there’s only so much Advil a person can take). Which leads to my final conclusion on this first of Jordans: the Air Jordan I is good for mall rats, but bad for gym rats.