Larry Miller, a former prisoner who became Nike’s Jordan brand chairman and Portland Trail Blazers president, transformed his life so completely that even Barack Obama’s Secret Service didn’t recognize him when his criminal history surfaced during a background check to meet the president.
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During a fireside chat with Fat Joe at a VIP dinner in New York for the Harlem Festival of Culture, Miller revealed, “Obama was coming to speak at Nike… and the guy from Nike, who’s like the lobbyist for Nike in [Washington] DC, said, ‘Hey man, they want you to come to the Obama event, Secret Service just needs your information.’”
Miller gave his info, but recalled, “I [didn’t] hear anything for like four or five days and finally, it’s the day before the event, and I’m like, ‘I guess I ain’t make the cut,’” he said.
The top exec then got a call from the lobbyist and, “He said, ‘Hey man. How are you doing? You know, Secret Service reached out to me and said, ‘What’s your middle name?’” he recalled.
“I said, ‘My middle name [is] Garland. That was my grandfather’s name.’ He said, ‘Oh, you’re good, man. There’s this ‘Larry G. Miller guy’ that’s got all these felonies, but you’re good,’” Miller continued.
“I’m like, ‘OK, I guess I’m good! I ended up going to the event with Obama and they didn’t put it together that it was me!” Miller added.
Miller, 72, was in and out of jail from the “age of like 12 to 30… I was in a gang growing up –when I was 16-years-old, I shot another kid and he died,” he said.
He said, “I ended up being charged as an adult for second degree murder.”
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Miller kept his violent criminal past hidden from his powerful pals, as well as Nike and NBA authorities, until last year, when he and his daughter, Laila Lacy, began writing “Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom.”
