Like any wildly successful company, the people who got in at the start benefit the most. Nike was also fortunate to have hit the mother lode with Jordan and Tiger. They literally did not plan that and weren’t really even necessarily prepared to handle the immediate success and money flowing everywhere. A lot of things that were beyond the control of anyone happened to fall in favor of a bunch of regular guys from Oregon at a very lucky time in history. You will probably never see this again.
I hope the author won't mind, I quoted the post of someone with whom I completely agree.
I doubt that Nike will ever be so lucky again.