Legends and Soles, The Memoir of An American Original, is the long-awaited book on the life and times of Sonny Vaccaro, a sports marketing maverick and basketball insider who is best known for spearheading a push to sign budding NBA star Michael Jordan to a unprecedented Nike endorsement deal in 1984. The Jordan deal revolutionized sports marketing and helped make His Airness a larger than life figure who transcended popular culture, first in America and then around the world.
Vaccaro’s memoir, written in collaboration with six-time New York Times bestselling author Armen Keteyian, was published by HarperCollins and has been available in popular mediums since February 25, 2025. The 322-page memoir chronicles Vaccaro’s most defining moments, from the beginning of the first high school All-American game in 1965, the Roundball Classic, to courting college basketball coaches for start-up Nike, to going “all in” on Jordan as Nike’s prime endorser, to the bitter disappointment of allowing LeBron James to sign with Nike in 2003 after he was fired by the shoe-company giant 12 years earlier, to his pivotal role in the O’Bannon vs. NCAA lawsuit.
The most memorable and gripping stories of Vaccaro’s life as the “Godfather of Summer Basketball” and the basketball insider who persuaded Nike to invest heavily in Jordan were well-chronicled in ESPN’s 30 For 30 Documentary “Sole Man” in 2015 and brought to life by the 2023 movie “Air: Courting A Legend” starring Matt Damon as Vaccaro and Ben Affleck as Nike Czar Phil Knight. There is no need to re-hash the seminal moments such as the famous meeting with Jordan at Tony Roma’s in Santa Monica or facilitating a little-known plan for the L.A. Lakers to draft the late Kobe Bryant straight out of high school in 1996 here.
As a media partner and promotion liaison for the Roundball Classic in the early 2000s until the last game in 2007 while working for Student Sports, yours truly had a chance to spend some time with Vaccaro and work with his team that made the all-star event happen, particularly with his wife Pam Vaccaro and Pam’s late sister, Mary Jo Monakee Schwartz. What we wanted to do for other basketball afficiandos and true fans of the game is bring to light 15 important revelations we learned from reading his memoir that helped tie the seminal moments together. Despite numerous conversations with Vaccaro, these are things we’ve never knew or asked him about until after reading his memoir.
Legends And Soles: 15 Things We Didn’t Know
The Big Fella
1. How much credit he truly gave the late Rob Strasser, Nike’s Marketing Director, who he met and introduced Vaccaro to his future boss, Nike CEO Phil Knight, in 1977. A marketing genius, Strasser didn’t like practicing law as much as Vaccaro didn’t like being a school teacher when he was trying to get the Roundball Classic off the ground in the mid-1960s. He called Strasser, who passed at 46 in 1993, a “once-in-a-lifetime” person. “He died so young, no one really knew how important he was to the whole deal,” Vaccaro told Ballislife. “Knight put it on his shoulders to go to the Dapper Dan and see what it was all about. That positioned me and allowed me to eventually get to Michael. It was all set up by Rob.”
Ballplayer Dreams
2. The Pittsburgh Pirates offered Vaccaro a $3,000 Minor League Contract out of Trafford (Pa.) High School in 1957. The future face of grassroots basketball was also All-WPIAL in football, which helped him earn a scholarship to the University of Kentucky. Vaccaro had to attend Reedley College in California to make grades for a D1 school, but his injuries kept his football career from getting off the ground, although his gift for gab and relating to athletes led him to accepting a scholarship as a basketball recruiting assistant at Youngstown University.
Cold Call
3. We never knew how Sonny connected with the folks at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when he wanted to pursue his idea of the Roundball Classic. He called Marino Parascenzo, the Gazette’s high school sports writer, to get his idea off the ground. It was Parascenzo’s idea to hold the game at the new Civic Arena to get the Dapper Dan Club involved with a charitable angle, when Vaccaro’s first idea was to hold it at a local high school. With friend Pat DiCesare being an event promoter who had booked the Beatles at the Civic Arena, the idea caught the attention of Al Abrams, president of Dapper Dan charities. “Parascenzo is a couple of years older than me, still living, and I speak to his great-grand daughter” Vaccaro said. “Pat had a couple of dollars and the Beatles had came in.”
“I Won’t Be In The Way”
4. Vaccaro recruited the first United States teams by phone from the offices at the Post-Gazette. That would surely be hard to do today. Being 25 years old probably helped, because in those days young men were mature and people in the community were willing to help them. Nowadays, it’s hard to envision a young man that age making a major dent in the grassroots basketball world looking to start a national all-star game.
This Beats Teaching
5. Vaccaro worked with agents to sign players for the ABA in 1969, and even signed George Gervin to the Virginia Squires. Vaccaro working with agents while being the event director of the Roundball Classic opens as much eyes as his off-season gambling forays each spring and summer in the pre-Nike says. “When I went to work for Nike, they knew all about my gambling; I never hid that,” Vaccaro said.
McDonald’s Roundball Classic?
6. Vaccaro approached McDonald’s about being a sponsor for his Roundball Classic a year before the company got involved with the late Bob Geoghan to sponsor the Capital Classic in Washington, D.C. in 1974. Geoghan used that sponsorship of his DMV vs. United States showcase to start the East-West McDonald’s All-American Game in 1978. Geoghan passed in February of 2022.
“We were friends until he died,” Vaccaro said. “We lost out on players, but we treated each other with dignity. He was pleasant. Bob thought of the (McDonald’s) game. In 1977, Gene Banks and Albert King were 1-2 in the country and they went to play in the Capital Classic. So did Wayne McCoy and Magic Johnson. I went to the game, and I flew them home to make sure they got to the Roundball. Kenny Turner, Magic’s guy, we had him locked in and we thought he was going to play. Then Magic went to Europe. That was bitter because we had him already. After the 1979 NCAA’s, Magic came by to talk to the Roundball guys.
“For me with McDonald’s, they had a name and I was looking for sponsorship money. I went to their headquarters in Northbrook, Ill., and wanted them to be involved. I went there on my dime. It wasn’t an instant connection. In those days, there was no follow up or email. There was no need to call back again. I don’t know what they thought in regards to Bob.”
“Please Mr. Vaccaro, Please!”
7. It was at his final Big Ten Basketball Camp in 1970 where he got the premonition from an unsung camper that sneakers were more than just a necessary tool of the game. They could be cool and stylish. “The camper’s name was Charley and that happened like it was yesterday,” Vaccaro said.
“It’s Gotta Be The Shoes”
8. Vaccaro’s first foray with Nike at 37 years old was with the intention to create basketball shoes. Vaccaro’s first cold calls, naturally were to Converse and Pro-Keds, but that didn’t yield any results. It was super agent Jerry Davis who made the connection to Nike, which was first known as Blue Ribbon Sports. “If the Nike thing didn’t start, I don’t know what the hell I would have done,” Vaccaro said. “There never would have been a Jordan. By the time I got to Nike, Pam and I knew each other already. I didn’t have the money to do anything.”
Hello Nike
9. It took Vaccaro 13 years to get sponsorship money for the Roundball Classic (in 1978); the game would no longer just rely on the gate.
Marked Man
10. The NCAA hounded Vaccaro for his connections to then UNLV head coach Jerry Tarkanian, the first college hoops coach he signed to an endorsement deal with Nike in 1978.
“Vegas Sonny”
11. In the early 1980s, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) eventually had Vaccaro pay back taxes for the plethora of Vegas comps he had because of his gambling and connections in town through UNLV. Vaccaro is pretty sure his run-in with former FBI agent turned NCAA investigator Hale McMenamin was the reason the IRS looked into his taxes.
Pittsburgh To Vegas
12. He met renowned oddsmaker and gambling Hall of Famer Jack Franzi (aka “Pittsburgh Jack”) through the Roundball Classic. It was Franzi that got Vaccaro’s younger brother Jimmy into the sports handicapping world. Jimmy Vaccaro is still in Vegas as a bookmaker at South Pointe Casino and in 2023 was part of the inaugural Sports Gambling Hall of Fame.
“Oh, By The Way…”
13. Northwestern University English professor Arthur “Chick” Sherrer owned the Athletes For Better Education (AFBE) Camp, but didn’t convey to Sonny the camp was behind on its bills to Princeton University when he wanted Nike to sponsor it with apparel in 1983. Vaccaro wanted to make it a Nike property, but the shoe company’s legal team was weary about owning the camp because of the liability of players or coaches getting hurt. Nike paid off the debt and Vaccaro took ownership and renamed it the ABCD (Academic Betterment and Career Development) Camp. “I was never thinking about running a camp at that time,” Vaccaro said. “I knew right away I had to get these kids in Nike shoes. Pam ran the camp after I got sick (in Europe). She basically ran the camped and everything was organized.”
Brand Jordan or Jordan Brand?
14. Rob Strasser and Peter Moore were influential in the creation of the Jordan Brand, ironically after they had left Nike in 1987. The marketing duo had created their own company after parting ways with Nike and pitched to Phil Knight what Michael, as his own individual brand, might look like in the future when his contract was up for re-negotiation in 1988. The Nike CEO wasn’t thrilled with that idea. “Michael and Peter Moore were close,” Vaccaro said. “They played golf together. I don’t know if he would have left, but we couldn’t get him $20 million a year. We certainly weren’t going to go bankrupt trying to. We told him ‘you better stick with Knight, we can’t guarantee you the money.”‘
“I’ll Do It, Sonny”
15. High-powered civil rights attorney Michael Hausfeld and Vaccaro needed a lead plaintiff in their enormous antitrust case vs. the NCAA. Ed O’Bannon clearly understood the injustices of his likeness being used in a EA SPORTS video game without his consent, but many assumed he reached out to Vaccaro and others for legal counsel on the matter. It happened to be the other way around. Haufeld’s legal team and Vaccaro needed a credible and good lead plaintiff for the case. Vaccaro reached out to numerous other athletes prior to the 1990 high school All-American out of Artesia (Lakewood, Calif.). Not that they need to be named, but one was a late Syracuse point guard that was a staple of ESPN college basketball telecasts in the mid 1980s.
Ronnie Flores is the national Grassroots editor of Ballislife.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter: @RonMFlores
