Larry Miller, who leads the Jordan Brand at Nike, revealed that he killed a man as a teenager and kept it a secret for decades. When Miller was 16, he shot and killed an 18-year-old man in West Philadelphia in September 1965, and he served time in prison for the crime. Miller, now 72, recounted the details of his crime in his upcoming book Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom and in a new interview with Sports Illustrated.
Miller said he kept the story a secret from his close friend Michael Jordan, Nike founder Phil Knight, and other NBA executives. The former Portland Trail Blazers president said his crime was senseless and he did not know the victim, Edward White. He hoped that by coming forward now, he can inspire at-risk youth and people in prison to avoid violence.
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“I mean, there was no valid reason for this to happen,” Miller told SI of his crime. “And that’s the thing that I really struggle with and that’s… you know, it’s the thing that I think about every day. It’s like, I did this, and to someone who… it was no reason to do it. And that’s the part that really bothers me.”
Miller wanted the details of the crime to come out on his own terms, rather than through leaked copies of his book. The book was written with his oldest daughter, Lalia Lacy, and will be released by HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint in 2022. “This was a really difficult decision for me… because, for 40 years, I ran from this. I tried to hide this and hope that people didn’t find out about it,” Miller said.
By keeping his time in prison a secret, Miller said he could climb the corporate ladder. After earning a degree from Temple University and an MBA from La Salle University, he served as an executive for Jantzen, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soup Company. He joined Nike in 1997 and became the Jordan Brand president in 1999. He left Nike in 2007 to join the Trail Blazers as president but left to rejoin Nike as Jordan Brand president in 2012. The secret had a mental and physical toll though. It caused recurring nightmares and migraines that were bad enough to require emergency room trips. It was “earing me up inside,” Miller said.
The publication of the secret in SI will not come as a shock to those closest to Miller. He recently began sharing his experience with Jordan, Knight, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, other Nike executives, and his close mentor, coach George Raveling. “I’ve been blown away by how positive the response has been,” Miller said, adding that it has been a “freeing exercise.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Miller said he would “Absolutely” go back and undo his crime. Memories of the experience came back to him recently when he heard a commercial with the slogan, “Every person is irreplaceable.” “I think understanding that just makes you value life,” he told SI. “And that was one of the differences for me in the street, and I think for a lot of folks in the street: There’s not a value placed on other lives and your own life. We were on a mission to kill ourselves, and it’s just fortunate we didn’t. It just more and more makes me feel sorry about what I did.”
