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I t’s October 5, 1984. You’re one of just 2,000 people strolling into Bradley University Stadium in Peoria, Illinois. You’re not there to watch the Bradley Braves in an interconference clash, but to watch the lowly Chicago Bulls play in their first NBA preseason game. A 21-year-old by the name of Michael Jordan is about to see his first-ever action as a professional basketball player. When he takes the floor and scores his first baskets, it’s in a second-hand jersey with different font on the front and the back, along with the shadow of what appear to be another player’s surname and number hastily replaced with “Jordan” and “23.”
Do you think you would’ve guessed it right then? Would you have felt the ground shift beneath your feet as this league – this sport, all sports, pop culture, the whole world – began to change?
What if you happened to be at the Los Angeles Forum on November 3, 1996, for the Lakers’ regular season opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves? During the Lakers’ 5-point win, do you think you would’ve even cared when Kobe Bryant took the court for the first time ever? When you saw the skinny kid take off his warmups and unveil “Bryant” and “8” stitched onto his first-ever game-worn jersey before running around for six agonizing, scoreless minutes, would you have known just what the world was in for?
Of course not. No one did. No one, that is, but Jordan and Bryant, who were just then beginning the storied careers that would make them Legends of Sport.
“Debut jerseys represent the genesis of a player’s career, before we knew anything about what they’d become.”
Jordan’s rookie preseason debut jersey – signed by His Airness himself and offered at Sotheby’s in Dawn of an Era, March 12-26, 2025 – is an utterly unique piece of sporting history. So is Bryant’s rookie debut jersey, which Sotheby’s will offer in Origins of the Mamba, April 10-24, 2025.
These are the earliest known jerseys worn in NBA games by two pillars upon which modern basketball rests. But why is memorabilia like game-worn jerseys so valuable? It’s partially because it’s rare – after all, an athlete has only so many games and seasons to build and cement their legacy. A legend’s rookie jerseys are more valuable because they’re even rarer: they’re from just the first fraction of a player’s career, before their most productive years. Collectors value rookie memorabilia because it symbolizes something new, something exciting – the birth of new talent in the sport. Debut jerseys, such as the Jordan and Bryant jerseys offered at Sotheby’s, are often the most valuable of all because they represent a singular moment: the first time the player stepped out on the court or field.
“Debut jerseys represent milestones,” says Brendan Hawkes, Assistant Vice President and Sports Specialist at Sotheby’s. “They represent the genesis of a player’s career. This is the jersey that they wore before we knew anything about what they’d become. And for each player, there’s only one.”
Rookie memorabilia is the physical embodiment of greatness. It’s the first, modest pen stroke of a legend, where history and eternity meet. Sotheby’s NBA auctions, which offer historic game-worn gear and jerseys straight from the court, offer a level of access to these iconic moments that collectors have never had before, let alone in Peoria in 1984.
Jordan’s and Bryant’s rises were thought to be anything but slam dunks. Jordan was selected third by the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the 1984 NBA Draft. Although he was considered a wonderful prospect, the Houston Rockets bet on Hakeem Olajuwon and, most painfully, the Portland Trail Blazers chose Sam Bowie. The contours of the sport were totally different before Jordan. MJ was a shooting guard operating on the wing, but basketball was played in the paint, close to the basket, by big bruising men like Olajuwon and Bowie.
Bryant was even more of a long shot. A standout high-school shooting guard, Kobe was still 17 when he was drafted 13th overall by the Charlotte Hornets in the 1996 NBA Draft before being traded that same night for the beloved but aging center Vlade Divac. Much more exciting than Bryant’s addition was that of the young superstar center Shaquille O’Neal, who joined as a free agent that summer.
If you know basketball – and even if you don’t – you probably know the rest of their stories. Jordan and Bryant were two singular athletes, artists and competitors, perhaps dissimilar from any other players except one another. They aren’t merely the greatest players in the history of the NBA, but also the most iconic, living on as vivid memories in fans’ minds: Dunk contests, three-peats, MVP awards, sneakers, fadeaways, tears, comebacks, buzzer-beaters, nicknames. And, sadly, Bryant’s tragic early death five years ago.
There is no way anyone sitting in Peoria in 1984 or at the Forum in 1996 could’ve seen any of this coming. And therein lies the beauty and the value of not just holy-grail collectibles like these jerseys, but of all rookie memorabilia. They’re hints, hidden in plain sight, of the legends to follow. In that sense, they’re universal. The raw, untapped, unrealized potential emanating from a jersey, rookie card, shoe or shooting shirt lies within all of us. Or at least in our favorite players.
Jordan and Bryant introduced this sport to a world that in turn took notice. Ironically, their uniqueness as players guaranteed the existence of more Jordans and Bryants to come. LeBron James, now 40 years old, stands shoulder to shoulder with Jordan and Bryant in the pantheon of the greatest and most important players to ever pick up a basketball. And more players, athletes whose stories are nowhere near completion yet – Luka Doncic, Anthony Edwards, A’Ja Wilson, Nikola Jokic, Caitlin Clark – arrive every day. Collectors know that sports memorabilia is the connective tissue between these generational talents – the junction between the past and the future. And at Sotheby’s, no longer do you have to wait 40 years for a chance to own a hallowed piece of basketball history.
So which player’s career would you like to look back upon? Who do you think is next to make the earth shift beneath our feet? If you could go back to any gym and be present at the first pen stroke of any legend, whose story would you choose?
