Nike Exec Confesses to Murder, Gang Affiliation During Teenage Years

Nike executive Larry Miller, chairman of the Michael Jordan brand, revealed jaw-dropping details about his teenage life during a recent interview with Sports Illustrated (SI) Magazine. Miller has been with Nike since 1997.

Miller, while on a press tour for his upcoming book, "Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom," revealed in an exclusive SI interview that he shot and killed a man when he was 16.

The Jordan brand chairman, now 72, detailed that he used a .38-caliber gun to shoot and kill 18-year-old Edward White in 1965.

White died at the scene of the crime, and Miller was not released from prison until around the time he turned 30.

According to Miller, the situation was hard for him to process because it was a senseless murder.

"I mean, there was no valid reason for this to happen. 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," he said, adding that everyone was "drunk" at the time.

"I was in a haze," the Jordan brand chairman recounted. "Once it kind of set in, I was like, ‘Oh, sh*t, what have I done?’ It took years for me to understand the real impact of what I had done."

Miller, who used to be a member of a West Philadelphia gang called Cedar Avenue, revealed that the murder was an attempt at retribution for the killing of a friend during a gang fight in September 1965. Later that same month, Miller and members of his gang went out searching for anyone affiliated with the rival gang.

"Miller did not know the victim, or whether he had anything to do with the stabbing of his friend, or even whether he had any connection to the 53rd and Pine gang," the SI interview highlighted.

Miller acknowledged that until recently he kept the incident a secret. In recent months, however, he revealed the story to Michael Jordan, National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver and a number of other Nike executives.

The Nike exec told SI that he wishes he "could go back and undo it," but since he cannot, he is going to attempt to "prevent this from happening to someone else."

"I started being more interested in impressing people in the street than I did my teachers and parents,” Miller said of his past. “By the time I was 16, I was just a straight-up gangbanger, thug. I was drinking every day."

He added that by coming clean about his past, he can now speak to at-risk youths about the dangers of gun and gang violence.

Nike CEO John Donohoe told SI that he hopes Miller's experience "can create a healthy discourse around criminal justice reform, by helping remove the stigma that holds people and communities back."