Nike used to be the sportswear giant that seemed impossible to knock off its pedestal.
Now the company is taking hits from multiple directions, and OutKick’s Craig Carton believes the problem goes far deeper than one ugly NBA jersey.
Nike’s latest stumble has been hard to miss. The company unveiled its so-called “Specter Edition” NBA jerseys, a design that quickly became a target of ridicule online. At the same time, Nike’s stock has been sliding, adding to the sense that one of America’s most recognizable brands has lost some of its old momentum.
And now Nike is reportedly headed for removal from the S&P 100.
For Carton, the jersey is almost a visual representation of what went wrong.
“This is part of the problem right here,” Carton said while pointing to an image of the jerseys. He mocked the design as if Nike had hired “a blind creator” to throw paint at a wall in a Jackson Pollock-style experiment.
It is difficult to argue that the jerseys are helping.
But Carton’s larger argument is about something that happened years before the latest design controversy.
He points back to 2018, when Nike partnered with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and centered a major campaign around him.
“In 2018, Nike decided to get in bed with Colin Kaepernick,” Carton said. “And they scrapped ‘Just Do It’ and they started a new slogan, which was ‘Dream Crazy.’”
Carton then delivered his blunt assessment of the strategy.
“The only thing crazy that they did was partner with a lunatic who hates America.”
That is Carton’s characterization, not an established fact, but it captures the broader cultural argument surrounding Nike’s transformation during the era when major corporations increasingly embraced political activism.
For a while, the strategy appeared fashionable.
Corporate America discovered that taking sides on cultural issues could generate enormous attention, especially among younger consumers and progressive activists. Brands competed to demonstrate just how politically and socially aware they could be.
But cultural fashions have a shelf life.
And Nike now finds itself trying to regain its footing while the broader corporate appetite for overt political activism has become considerably more complicated.
That does not mean every problem on Nike’s balance sheet can be blamed on Kaepernick or politics. The company's struggles involve business decisions, competition, consumer behavior and the broader sportswear market.
But the cultural calculation matters.
A company can sell sneakers to people across the political spectrum. The question is what happens when the brand begins telling a large portion of those customers that their values are unwelcome.
That is the gamble Nike took.
The lesson is bigger than one company or one controversial partnership. Americans increasingly expect businesses to make good products, serve their customers and stay out of political trench warfare. When corporations turn themselves into cultural combatants, they should not be surprised when consumers remember—and respond.
Nike once had a remarkably simple message: Just Do It.
Perhaps the brand's biggest problem is that somewhere along the way, it decided it needed to tell customers what to think before selling them the shoes.
