Top 10 Bred Air Jordans Of All-Time

A common refrain from the sneaker community when it comes to their dissatisfaction with the current state of everything Jordan Brand is that they do not listen to the people who support them most. From quality concerns and pricing to choices in colorway, they will often say the decision makers are only fueled by what will drive up the share price at the expense of everything else. While there are plenty of valid reasons to be concerned with the brand, there’s never been a more blatant example of Jordan Brand listening to their audience than when they launched an entire marketing campaign around the 2019 retro of the OG black and red Air Jordan 4 - also known as the Playoffs - by playing into the “Bred” memes that were nearly a decade old.

See? They do listen. Nobody, not Nike, Jordan Brand, or Wieden and Kennedy (Nike’s famous ad agency partner), would have ever used Bred had it not been for the meme going mainstream. It’s like when your parents finally got around to using Facebook and then Twitter and then Instagram years after you abandoned each platform. And yet, despite old heads railing against it (they still prefer using “Black and Red” and “Playoffs” when it’s appropriate) and the usage of the term falling in and out of favor depending on how hot the community deems the latest retro to use the color scheme will be, Bred has endured.

As we approach the anniversary of the day the NBA instructed a then-rookie Michael Jordan to not wear the black and red Nike Air Ship, October 18 has become a pseudo-holiday of sorts among sneaker historians. How much of an effect did the NBA’s “banning” of MJ’s shoes play into the mythology of the Air Jordan 1? Does it reach the same heights if the league just allowed them like any other black and red sneaker that matches the Chicago Bulls uniforms? Or would nothing have changed? With that in mind (and with plenty of speculation that Jordan Brand could be releasing the Air Jordan 1 High 85 Bred with some minor changes from the February drop), here are our rankings of the 10 most memorable Bred Air Jordan models.

*The Air Jordan 6 Infrared is not a Bred sneaker. It’s Infrared, a different shade of red. God help us all if some streamer decides to call them something monstrous like “Bleds” or “Infrarack.”

The “It Doesn’t Really Matter, He Never Wore These” Division

10. Air Jordan 2 Bred (aka Alternate 87)

If you look at a lot of the copy that was circulating around the Air Jordan 2 Alternate 87 and the entire 2016 Jordan Alternate Collection, a word that got a lot of screen time was “reimagined,” as in this collection includes “reimagined’ Air Jordans in the form of hypothetical player exclusives that Michael Jordan would have worn during that time. It was an interesting effort to breathe new life into the Air Jordan 2 because it’s not like the Air Jordan 4 and Air Jordan 5 need any help. The result is a black Air Jordan 2 that looks oddly bizarre because we had been conditioned to only think of Michael Jordan wearing the 2s with white leather uppers. To ask us to “reimagine” the 1987 Slam Dunk Contest in this alternate colorway turned out to be more disorienting than Jordan Brand probably bargained for.

9. Air Jordan 5 Satin Bred

Here’s a mildly hot take: Satin Air Jordans sound better in theory than in execution. There’s no doubt that swapping from the leather base to something a little more refined and sophisticated ups the classy quotient. It’s like going from a vehicle that prioritizes efficiency to something that deserves its own IG account. Yes, it looks absolutely beautiful when you’re trying to flex in it, but the moment something goes wrong, it’s a disaster. It’s the same problem that Jordan Brand runs into when they want to slap patent leather on models that it clearly wasn’t designed to handle. As appealing as the Satin Bred Air Jordan 5 is, wearing them is like ruining their entire reason for existing. These were better off as the color samples that they reportedly were back in 1990.

8. Air Jordan 9 Bred

Eddie Jones wore them. For a Laker fan who has a lot of love and respect for the way the mid-90s Lake Show, led by Jones, Nick Van Exel, and Cedric Ceballos, bridged the gap between the Magic and Kareem Showtime era and the Kobe and Shaq three-peat run, EJ is goated around here. It also didn’t hurt that he was one of the original members of Jordan Brand and he was among the first from the new endeavor to receive all sorts of player exclusives. During his Miami Heat tenure, Jones wore a black patent leather pair of the Air Jordan 9s with hits of red on the Jumpman logos and the #6 on the heel to represent his jersey number. The 2018 release over 15 years later would make a few minor changes, but the energy and the player they represented stayed.

The “Ok, MJ Did Wear These, But It Just Wasn’t Enough” Division

7. Air Jordan 13 Bred

During Michael Jordan’s Last Dance with the Chicago Bulls, he wore the Air Jordan 13 for nearly the entire season and the playoffs, save for the few times he broke protocol and wore the 14s against Tinker Hatfield’s wishes. Had he worn the Air Jordan 13 during those last few games, including during The Last Shot, the reputation of the 13s grows exponentially, Yes, the the Bred 13s made a ton of appearances that year, but when it mattered the most, it’s telling that MJ wanted to leave everybody with something brand new and had never before been seen by the public instead of the model that had worked for him all throughout the season.

6. Air Jordan 8 Bred (aka Playoffs)

Without a doubt, the toughest omission from the Top 5. The consensus among basketball analysts and those who pretend to be one on social media is that Michael Jordan’s performance in the 1993 NBA Finals was his best. Going up against a tough and motivated Phoenix Suns team that had reigning MVP Charles Barkley, the Bulls faced their steepest challenge yet. For the Finals, Jordan averaged 41 points, 6 assists, and nearly 9 rebounds a game and never played less than 40 minutes in any contest, including 57 minutes in the epic triple overtime Game 3 the Bulls actually lost.

Despite those gaudy numbers and the fact that the Bulls did go on to win the first of two separate three-peats in that era, what MJ is missing from the 1993 Finals is a single moment that encapsulates the run. It doesn’t have A Spectacular Move like in the 1991 Finals or The Shrug in 1992 where you can easily picture MJ in the Air Jordan 8. It could have been the dagger that beat the Suns in Game 6, but that honor went to John Paxson, an indicator that the Bulls were truly a team and winning was what ultimately mattered.

The “Oh, This is Legitimately Causing Me Mental Anguish Trying to Rank These” Division

5. Air Jordan 1 Bred

For its effect on sneaker culture, the Bred 1s are on top. There’s no denying what the original colorways of the Air Jordan 1 did for the growth of Nike, Michael Jordan, and basketball as a whole. You can picture in your mind no less than ten moments of Jordan in the Bred 1s because of Nike’s brilliant marketing and MJ doing amazing things while rocking them. The only thing missing is an iconic postseason moment. The 63 points he dropped on the Boston Celtics in the 1986 Playoffs that was so traumatizing, Larry Bird said, “that wasn’t Michael Jordan. That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.” “God” was wearing a pair of Chicago 1s with Nike Dunk tooling. It’s a caveat the size of MJ’s Kawhi Leonard-sized hands*, but when compiling the resume and stacking them against the Bred Jordans on this list, it matters.

* MJ technically has bigger hands, but Kawhi has owned the big hands meme for so long he’s become the go-to figure whenever someone wants to make a point about freakishly large hands.

4. Air Jordan 11 Bred (aka Playoffs)

If the 1993 Finals was Michael Jordan’s best performance on the biggest stage, the 1996 edition was maybe the least impressive. Of course, that’s like saying the least impressive watch in your collection is an Omega Seamaster, but you get the idea. Shawn Kemp was even floated by the media as a potential Finals MVP and he was on the losing side. Nevertheless, MJ had a handful of signature moments in the Playoffs and the Finals in both regular and low-cut variations of the Bred Air Jordan 11, but the image that people will never forget is one that didn’t even happen on the court. After the Bulls wrapped up Game 6, Jordan hugged the basketball and didn’t want to let go. Eventually, he made his way back to the locker and crashed out onto the floor sobbing uncontrollably, basketball wrapped tightly in his hands and 11s on his feet. The Bulls had won the Finals on Father’s Day, and it was the first championship Michael had won without his father, who was murdered in 1993.

3. Air Jordan 12 Bred (aka Flu Game)

Ever since Michael Jordan gutted through what everybody assumes now to be food poisoning during Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, the shoes and the moment have been linked to each other inextricably. When you hear someone say they just had a Flu Game moment, it was a time when they had to power through unspoken levels of fatigue or pain in order to get the job done. Meanwhile, the Flu Game Air Jordan 12 has reached mythical status in the same way that the all-black Nike Air Force 1 has become everybody’s signal that some serious stuff is about to go down. Not a lot of sneakers can cause that much of a shift in the energy in a room, but then again, not a lot of sneakers helped Michael Jordan overcome “flu-like” symptoms.

2. Air Jordan 14 Bred (aka Last Shot)

Nearly 30 years later, the only thing that you could argue would have made The Last Shot even more of an unforgettable moment is if it was during a Game 7. Sadly, that would deprive us of a legendary Jay-Z bar, but imagine the drama. If the principles of The Last Dance documentary are to be believed, win or lose, this Finals was likely going to be the last time Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson and the rest of that squad were going to be on the court together. Imagine the tension of that sequence in Game 6 when Jordan stole the ball from Karl Malone (on a Sunday) and walked down the court with zero intention of setting up a play that didn’t involve him, but this time it’s a Game 7. Stakes are a lot different. Jordan misses the last shot in Game 6, there’s still a Game 7. Miss the last shot in Game 7, Utah wins, Jordan retires with only five rings, the Jordan 14 is a footnote instead of in the pantheon of OG Jordans, and he has that mark on his Finals record that Kobe and LeBron fans would never let go.

1. Air Jordan 4 Bred (aka Playoffs)

“Jackson, Tyson, Jordan, Game 5” also doesn’t hit as hard as “Game 6,” but the 1989 version of The Shot is just as much of a defining moment in Michael Jordan’s career as any he’s had in his career. It’s potentially even more important than the Last Shot because it is a pivotal point in Jordan’s timeline. Unlike The Last Shot, this was a win or go home situation. And unlike The Last Shot, this was about establishing a legacy, not adding to it. Jordan misses The Last Shot, it’s a bummer for himself and the fandom, but he’s still widely considered the greatest to ever lace up a pair of sneakers. Jordan misses The Shot against Cleveland, the Bulls are not only labeled as unable to get over the Detroit hump, but the Cleveland one as well. The media was already starting to turn on Michael by this point and him being unable to deliver in the clutch would have only further driven the narrative. Of course, it’s a moot point because MJ did make the shot with the Bred Air Jordan 4 in clean view for the world to see and the rest is history.

Juan Martinez

From video game journalism to veteran of the sneaker blog era to podcasting about well, everything, Juan is smiling through it all and can't believe this is his life. After recently getting into Formula 1, he now has hot takes about who the greatest driver of all time is. Email: juan@soleretriever.com