The Air Jordan 9 arrived late in 1993 at a hundred and twenty five dollars, with a clean silhouette and an outsole printed with words in languages from around the world, a nod to how far Jordan’s reach had spread. It was meant to mark a global icon at his peak.

Instead it became the absence shoe. Jordan retired in October 1993 to play minor-league baseball, so the 9 is the first model in the line he never wore in an NBA game. It is the shoe of the gap, the season and a half when the best player in the world was chasing a different dream.

The statue outside the United Center shows Jordan rising in the 9, which is its own kind of immortality. The OG black and white and the Powder Blue are the retros that matter. It is significant precisely because of who was not on the court in it.