In Response To Joe Littlewood "It's Gotta Be The Shoes"

In his post Joe highlights Nike's choice in 1984 to sign a relatively unproven, (at the time) basketball player named Michael Jordan. Nike put all their marketing efforts into promoting the new Air Jordans.
Now hindsight is always 20/20, but at the time this could be seen as a huge risk. If I was Nike's marketing director, I don't think that I would have taken this risk. Although it did pay off in the end, if it failed or Jordan got a career ending injury early on, this could have broken Nike. Taking a high risk high reward approach in business doesn't usually work in the long run but this gamble paid off huge for Nike. If you were running Nike what would you have done? Take the high risk high reward route? Or go with a more safe approach?