But in the “image is everything” era when Jordan made exponentially more money outside of basketball from endorsements, no one backed it up on the court like Jordan. He created a new world in both sports marketing and sports myth-making. “In tennis or golf or boxing, the mystique is the individual,” Jordan’s agent David Falk said to Henry Louis Gates Jr. in a 1998 New Yorker story. “Whereas no matter how great Bill Russell or Bob Cousy was, it was the Celtics dynasty, it was always institutional. Michael changed all that. Singlehanded.”