Tyler Reddick Is Michael Jordan’s Guy to Bring the Jumpman to NASCAR

Michael Jordan’s race car driver is afraid to wear his sneakers. Tyler Reddick, 29, who drives the number 45 car for Jordan’s 23XI racing outfit, is in the hunt to win his first NASCAR Cup Series championship this season, but he has a hard time shaking his southern Illinois dirt track racing roots.

“Every time my parents would get me something nice like that, it would just sit in the closet. I wouldn’t even take them on the road. I know they’d just get absolutely destroyed,” Reddick says. “I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit better about that now.”

NASCAR hasn’t traditionally been associated with sneakers, although the sport’s had its moments in the past: Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Bobby Labonte having their own Nikes, Dale Earnhardt Jr. having an Adidas collection. And the co-owner of Reddick’s race team, Denny Hamlin, has been signed to Jordan Brand since 2011. He also drove the first race car with a Jumpman paint scheme during a truck race in 2013. After that, Kurt Busch, who previously drove the 45 car for 23XI, also had paint jobs that referenced the Air Jordan 3 “Black/Cement” and Air Jordan 11 “Concord.” With Busch’s retirement in 2023, Reddick would have literal big shoes to fill.

Reddick’s Jordan-themed cars have caught the eye of race fans and sneakers lovers across the internet since he joined 23XI in 2023. This year at Talladega he won the race—the first win with Jordan in attendance—in a car that mirrored the colorway of the “Motorsports” Air Jordan 6. He won this year’s NASCAR regular season, while full-on sick, in an Upper Deck car that had Michael Jordan plastered across the hood. There was a J. Balvin Air Jordan car, a UNC Jordan car, and a car that resembled the Air Jordan 5 “Grape.” That was special to Reddick, as the 5 is his favorite Jordan model.

This past weekend, Reddick punched his ticket into the Final Four of the NASCAR playoffs with a last lap pass of Ryan Blaney and Hamlin.

Michael Jordan was present for Reddick’s win and was at Charlotte a few weeks back when both Hamlin and Reddick made it past the cut line by then skin of their teeth. I was able to sneak into the pits (thanks to the good folks at NASCAR) for that moment. Jordan, with his wife Yvette in tow, was visibly excited as he greeted Reddick and Hamlin.

Some might think Jordan getting into racing is all flash, a marketing ploy, but he loves the sport and his excitement and desire to win is palpable. You can feel it at the track and sense it on television.

“He has always loved racing and it’s been really cool since he’s gotten into the ownership side of things, how much he’s really learning about our sport,” Reddick says.

As the season winds down and the pressure amps up, it’s going to be electric to see how Reddick and Jordan react to the situation. And if they have special cars in the works. But in the time being, Reddick has pressing sneaker tasks at hand.

“I feel like we’re trying to get to that crossover point in the season where it’s about time to take all the high shoes and from the top of the closet, where I can’t reach without my ladder, and bring ’em back down and put the lows away,” he says.

Below is my interview with Reddick where he talks about racing for Jordan, getting sneakers, and sharing some with his wife. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Reddick will race for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship in Phoenix, Sunday, Nov. 10 at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.

Do you remember the first time you met Michael Jordan?
My first thing hanging out with Michael was really, really cool for me. We talked about racing, we talked about life and goals and what we’re trying to accomplish and just what his mindset is. It was a really, really cool conversation. Pretty surreal moment for me. Honestly. It was really, really cool to sit there, like I said, talk with him. We weren’t with a group of people, but sit there and then Michael brings out his own tequila and has us do a toast and we got to talk.

It was kind of a crazy moment. Hard putting into words, just being in the room with someone like him for the first time. Certainly I was very nervous, obviously, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or leave the wrong impression. But yeah, it was really cool to get to understand or start the process of understanding how great of a leader he is, how good of a job he does with communicating and making those that he communicates with. Understand his level of interest. It was a very surreal moment, honestly.

And did he give you a reason early on why he selected you to be one of his drivers?
Yeah, for me, I wasn’t fully aware of it. Well, I wasn’t aware of it really at all, but when Denny and Michael were figuring out in the future, whenever Kurt Busch was ready to be done, they had a list of drivers they wanted to put in that car, and it was a cool moment, but I wasn’t expecting it. I was blown away when they told me that I was the guy they wanted in that car. I was their first choice. It’s a cool moment for me because for years and years and years I’ve worked really hard to try to become a better race car driver, elevate the programs I’ve been at win races, win championships, and it was really cool for individuals like Denny and Michael to see that, realize that and want me to be a part of their future as well. 

I feel like the paint schemes, the Jordan-inspired paint scheme, are a big deal. Do you have any input on those or do you have any personal favorites?
It’s hard for you to pick favorites. Input-wise, not yet. I feel like that would be cool one day. But for me when we’ve—thinking back to the last Charlotte—when we had the WINGS Initiative car, we ran the Grape scheme. For me, that car was really, really cool because I’ve always really, really liked the 5s. And so for me to run that car, I was so bummed. I was trying the hardest to find a pair of those shoes that week. I didn’t get them there in that moment. I ended up getting ’em later on. I got ’em earlier this year when I was in Vegas, so I finally have those in my collection. But for me, that car was just really cool because I love the 5 and I love that shoe, but dude, just bringing the kids in, they did, showing them the process of how to design a race car, what that’s going to look like. Each of those kids were designing a car based on shoes. 

But obviously the other scheme we ran, the UNC car, is just an iconic scheme and running it in North Carolina was going to be a hit. It was really fun to take it down to South Carolina, Darlington, to run it there too and piss off some of those fans down there. It’s been cool to see that crossover with fans of racing, it’s no secret since Michael’s gotten into NASCAR, there’s been a whole lot more Jordans walking through the garage, whether it’s 23XI or outside of 23X1. It’s been really cool to see that change.I feel like when I first got caught racing, every single person wore those ugly ass On Clouds or whatever they’re called, and I can’t stand that shoe. And it’s just an ugly shoe and I feel like more and more people are wearing Jordans in much more casual shapes. That’s been cool too. So just the crossover has been fun to watch. It’s good to be a part of, now that I’m here at 23XI.

And I feel like the car that you won the regular season with the Upper Deck car with MJ on the hood, a special one to have.
That was a lot of pressure. I mean, that week I was going to have a lot of pressure anyways. I remember looking at that Upper Deck car and looked at the hood. I remember seeing Michael, but I just remember thinking, wow, that’s so cool. And then it took to the second or third time, I looked at the car in the shop and I realized, Gretzky’s on the dang car and so is Tiger Woods. I’m like, OK, wow, great. I’ve got three outstanding professional athletes on my car, but have a really good weekend in Darlington.

And yeah, for us, it was a nightmare race. I’ve never been so sick in a race car, but we pushed through that deal and ended up still getting the regular season championship. So it was a really cool full moment for us in our team running that car, having to overcome those things. We had to fight all night long and fight through a lot of different things. That race in itself is typically hard enough when you’re completely healthy, let alone when you go there and you’re battling for regular season championship and add on top of it being under the weather.

The win at Talladega, too, I mean obviously a big win for you, but then you also had the Jumpman paint scheme on that and I feel like it just got a lot of attention.
The whole weekend was pretty surreal. Typically qualifying hasn’t been great. But we rolled into the race and we were doing a really, really good job of getting to the front, running up front, getting stage points. And then unfortunately the strategy we pulled to get the lead basically sacrificed over half the Toyotas. But to be able to stick to our game plan and hang on to the outside lane all the way until the back straightaway was a really a good pay for us. Obviously things got completely out of hand off turn 4 and we were able to snake through it and win, but got to have one brand on the car and win at Talladega, get the team second win there, and then get the bosses first in-person win and get to take him to Victory Lane. Was just crazy.And for me it’s kind of how it goes sometimes. I know Michael’s coming or he is going to be there, but in this case I think he knew he was coming, but it didn’t get to me. I got in the car, he was there in the box, and when I found out we won, obviously I was over the moon excited and with a Jordan Brand car. But the icing on the cake was finding out from my crew chief second after we’d won the race that Michael was there and we were going to get to go to Victory Lane altogether.

Do you feel any extra pressure with him too? I know that there was that interview that he had given during the race where the words he had said to Bubba, basically, you need to win. Do you get that from him?
It just depends on his schedule. I think there’s some weekends he’s there on Saturdays as well. There’s other weekends. He may not be getting there until we’re already getting in the car, so I won’t get a chance to see him beforehand. But it just depends. We were at Daytona, he got there a little bit early and we got to hang out and talk. And again, he has always loved racing and it’s been really cool since he’s gotten into the ownership side of things, how much he’s really learning about our sport. It was crazy, man at that Daytona race played out to a T exactly how he thought it would, and that just goes to show how locked in is he locked in, he is on it. And yeah, it’s always really cool to get to talk to him and especially the speeder races because it is pretty great. I mean, he really knows what’s going on, but when he interacts with me, Bubba, and Denny, and then the rest of the team as much as he does, it really helps him understand everything that’s going on.

Do you remember the first pair of Jordans that you got growing up, or did you have a pair of Jordans growing up?
I just knew better for me growing up dirt racing, I had a single pair of nice shoes, they wouldn’t last. I was fighting other things as well. I had a lot of issues with my feet growing up. I didn’t actually even figure out what size shoe I needed to wear until I was pretty much an adult. I was always wearing shoes that were way too small and my toes were all jacked up. So I’m glad I didn’t get any when I was younger, racing dirt, because I think I was wearing six and a half sevens growing up and now I wear, double check, nines. So yeah, it was all the dirt racing I did. There really wasn’t many opportunities with the life I lived on the road to wear shoes, wear nice shoes or wear nice things.

We would basically be going from one dirt track to the next and we’d be gone for months at a time just always working on the car or getting dirty at the racetrack. I mean, it was a different lifestyle than what I kind of have now to where we go race asphalt, the pits are clean, the garage is clean. You don’t have to worry about mud and dirt, dust. So for me, I pretty much wore the cheapest thing I could find growing up on my feet when I went to all these dirt tracks, because shoes would just get shot up and spit out after about a month at a time, just with how dirty they get, how far out they would get working on the cars, sometimes drop a car on your foot and rip a shoe up. So for me, I didn’t have a lot of nice shoes growing up for that reason.I knew that if I really, really had a pair of shoes that I was crazy about and wanted at that time that they just, I think even at that, I had a couple of shoes that I did enjoy growing up. I can’t even remember what they were, but every time my parents would get me something nice like that, it would just sit in the closet. I wouldn’t even take them on the road. I know they’d just get absolutely destroyed. So I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit better about that now where I’ve got a couple pair of Jordans that have been really mileaged out, that I don’t mind wearing when I’m working around the house or getting dirty or whatever else. For me that was the learning curve itself. I was a little too crazy about it. Each pair of shoes that I had, I never wanted to get them dirty or creased, and now I allowed myself to have at least two or three that are pretty beat up and wear throughout the day. I drive a manual car almost every single day. I have a Toyota Supra and I drive every single day and I looked absolutely ridiculous. I walked up to the car wearing my nice pair of shoes, I would take my left shoe off and put on a flip flop or put on something crazy looking right. So when I pushed the clutch, I wouldn’t crease the shoe and then I’d get out of the car and in AirSpeed people look at me like I’m crazy because I got one shoe on. I got a flip-flop on the other foot. 

Being a Jordan brand guy yourself, I’ve seen you’ve posted your sneaker hauls on Instagram. How special is it to you to open up those big packages?
Man, I get to do a lot of really cool things, but that is certainly when I’m at home, that is always one of my favorite surprises when I roll up to the house and there’s a mountain of boxes sitting there. You can tell where the boxes are coming from. You can tell they’re coming from Oregon and when I get home there’s just a max pile of boxes, an array of different sizes. It’s going to be a fun afternoon. So yeah, that’s always really, really great. Being able to have access to something like that and getting access to shoes and clothes. It’s always really hard for me to play favorites of the stuff that I get, but it is really, really fun when you get things before the release date, you get to wear it around for a couple weeks or a couple days. That for me is always really, really fun when they’re sending you stuff before it hits the shelves for everybody else. So I’ve always really enjoyed that part of it. It’s something about brand new sneakers, that smell of brand new shoes. It’s just really fun. It’s driving my wife crazy that I have so many shoes, but we’re trying to figure out where they’re all going to go.

Well, I went to the race at Charlotte and I was in the pits when you came out and I saw your wife was there waiting for you and she had the Travis Scott Jordans on. So I’m guessing that she gets shoes or asks for shoes as well.
That one. Sometimes she doesn’t like to ask me for things and she’ll just go get ’em on her own. But yeah, it depends. I think in certain cases they’ve been able to do things for the team and others. But yeah, me and my wife actually are, I think I’m a half size bigger than her, so a lot of the times she has a couple that she’s had, there’s some that she likes to get for herself. But there’s definitely been a number of times that I’ve come home and I’ve been looking for one specific pair and she’s got ’em on wearing ’em around. So I got to tell my wife to not walk through mud and take care of ’em. She’s definitely the type to wear her shoes. I wish I could be like her and just enjoy wearing ’em and wearing ’em in any conditions possible. But I definitely get a little too spun out when they get dirty. But yeah, she just loves them. Wear ’em. She wears ’em as it should be. I get a little too crazy. I like to keep them completely clean and crease free if possible, but it’s inevitable obviously.

Have you asked, or has there been any talks about them making you just a one-off addition for you? Or do you have any stuff like that?
Nothing like that is in the works, but it could be something that maybe down the road, but nothing like that is currently being worked on. I think for me personally, that would just be really, really cool. I think there’s a great opportunity to do something like that here with 23XI or with the 45 car.