Jordan Brand Chairman Larry Miller is the prime example of what turning your life completely around after making horrible decisions as a youth looks like. The Nike executive is gearing up to release his forthcoming autobiography Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom, which was co-written by his daughter Laila Lacy. He recently spoke with Sports Illustrated about one ghost from his past that he can’t shake.
When Miller was 16-years-old, he shot and killed an 18-year-old Black kid named Edward White on Sept. 30, 1965. The shooting was in retaliation to a friend being stabbed to death in a previous Philadelphia gang fight. Miller admits that he wasn’t even sure if White had anything to do with the death of his friend when he and his cohorts came across the first person they saw and the life-altering event occurred.
Miller ended up serving time for the murder and was incarcerated from his late teens until he was 30 years old. Upon his release, he earned an accounting degree from Temple University and never looked back at a life of crime. Miller discussed with Sports Illustrated the secret that he kept hidden for years from colleagues like Michael Jordan and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
“We were all drunk. I was in a haze. Once it kind of set in, I was like, ‘Oh, s—t, what have I done?’ It took years for me to understand the real impact of what I had done…That’s what makes it even more difficult for me, because it was for no reason at all. 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. 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… If I could go back and undo it, I would absolutely do that. I can’t. So all I can do is try to do what I can to help other people and try to maybe prevent this from happening to someone else,” Miller told SI.
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