Shane Parrish

He had deceived his partners, and now he was at their mercy.

The Iceman took it all in, and then he looked at Knight, and he said, there are worse things than ambitions.

What happened next is extraordinary.

The Iceman didn't just forgive Nike.

He walked into the Bank of California, paid off Nike's entire debt on the spot, and then told the bank that Nishu would be terminating its own relationship with them.

Let that sink in for a second.

A $100 billion company just burned a bridge with a major American bank to defend a tiny shoe operation based out of Oregon.

After he paid off the debt, the Iceman said two words, such stupidity.

And Knight thought he was talking about him, but he was talking about the bank.

Then the Iceman continued, I do not like stupidity.

People pay too much attention to the numbers.

There it is again, the pattern that runs through the entire Nike story.

The Iceman had watched these guys operate.

He'd seen how they treated people, how they ran toward problems, how they cared about the product.

The numbers looked terrible.

He trusted the man and not the balance sheet.

There's a garden at Nike headquarters today named after Nishu, a small tribute to a debt that can never be fully repaid.

With Nishu's backing and the bank crisis behind them, Nike entered its golden age, but not because of anything Nike planned, because America started running.

In 1972, a Yale-educated American named Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in Munich.

ABC broadcast it live.