The Air Jordan 9

The Air Jordan 9 was released during Michael Jordan's first retirement from basketball. Mike never played a full season in these shoes. During the designing of these shoes Mike was in Asia promoting for Nike and Tinker used this to his advantage as he was very influenced by Japanese culture. Tinker gave a Japanese reference hidden all throughout the shoe but the heel logo is a 'rising sun' Jordan Logo.  This shoe was designed to show the Jordan and his brand was a global thing and Tinker is quoted to say "everyone in the world wanted to be like Mike". On the sole of the shoe they put words in different languages that described Jordan's significance to the game and sports world wide.

 The Words are as listed:

Left Shoe
Uhuru (Swahili) – “Independence”
Cвобода (Russian) – “Freedom”
Cпорт (Russian) – “Sport”
Athletisch (German) – “Athletic”
Muundaji (Swahili) – “Hope”

Right Shoe
Intenso (Italian) – “Intense”
Liberté (French) – “Freedom”
Anmutig (German) – “Graceful”
Fuerza (Spanish) – “Force”
Dédié (French) – “Dedicated” (sneakerfiles.com)

The Air Jordan 9 Black/Charcoal
Courtesy of Sneakerfiles.com

This shoe released in October of 1993 in four color ways including the olives, powder blues, white/red, black/charcoal/red. Some other sought-after color ways are the cool greys, and the chromes. The shoe was also released during Jordan's baseball career so the brand made Jordan personalized baseball cleats to play in. They also released more cleats in 2002-2003.