Long before the world connected the words Black Mamba to Kobe Bryant, the identity was sitting inside a Nike conference room, wrapped around a prototype shoe meant for Michael Jordan. It started with ...

Before Kobe Bryant was known to all as "The Black Mamba," Nike intended for Michael Jordan to wear the moniker in 2003.

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 ...

NIKE STAFFERS SAT around a conference room table inside the company's Oregon headquarters in late 2002 examining a space-age material. Black and tubelike, Tech Flex had commonly been found inside cars ...