Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant adopted one of the most iconic nicknames in NBA history about halfway through his Hall of Fame career. Kobe began calling himself the “Black Mamba.” The nickname stuck to this day, so much so that Kobe’s last words as a Laker were “Mamba is out,” and the world knew what he meant.
But this pairing almost never happens. Years before Kobe Bryant declared himself the “Black Mamba,” Nike had other plans that would see Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan go down in history as the “Black Mamba.”
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According to ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, it all started with an advertising campaign surrounding the Air Jordan 19 sneakers. While researching a new sneaker material called Tech Flex, Nike executive Gentry Humphrey started thinking about snakes.
Humphrey decided to research “the most ferocious black snakes in the world” and immediately stumbled upon the black mamba.
From there, the Nike team began building an advertising campaign for the Air Jordan 19 around the moniker and imagery. After that campaign achieved pretty good results, Nike encountered a very serious problem: Jordan didn’t like snakes.
After trying to sell the idea to Jordan, the Bulls legend eventually agreed to allow one ad to air, then asked for the rest to be changed. In 2004, an Air Jordan 19 ad with a black mamba pattern appeared in an issue of ESPN: The Magazine. The sneaker has since been advertised without the Black Mamba graphic.
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One month after the launch of the Air Jordan 19, the movie “Kill Bill Volume 2” was released. It was that film’s reference to the Black Mamba that ultimately inspired Bryant to later adopt the nickname and image of “Black Mamba.”
According to Holmes, Bryant was dubbed “Mamba” in a 2005 ESPN article. In 2006, he appeared on the cover of SLAM magazine holding a snake. The nickname stuck, and Kobe adopted it, launching products based on the nickname and eventually naming his book “The Mamba Mentality: How I Play.”
In another universe, none of this happened. If it weren’t for his extreme fear of snakes, Jordan might have become the NBA’s “Black Mamba.” Bryant would almost certainly find himself an equally horrific nickname in a few years, but it’s hard to imagine working out in the same way as “Black Mamba” and Bryant became synonymous during and after his career.
