The Air Jordan XI is the shoe most people picture when they picture a Jordan. Tinker Hatfield wrapped the lower half in patent leather — a material borrowed from dress shoes, never before used on a basketball sneaker — and paired it with a translucent outsole and a ballistic mesh upper. It was designed to look like something you could wear with a tuxedo. Jordan wore it while winning 72 games.

This print catches him in the plainest possible moment: no dunk, no celebration, just Jordan pushing the ball upcourt with his head already up, scanning. The photographer was not shooting the shoes. But they are there, unmistakable in the patent leather, and that is what makes an ordinary frame from this season worth holding.

The detail that dates the photograph is the shorts. Jordan wore his old North Carolina practice shorts under his Bulls uniform for his entire career — the superstition that forced the NBA’s baggier shorts era, because he needed the outer pair long enough to cover them. Here they carry #23, the number he reclaimed after the brief and awkward #45 experiment that followed his return from baseball. By this season he was fully back, in the shoe that would define him commercially, on his way to a championship and the best regular-season record in league history.

PSA graded this Type I Authentic and dated it c. 1995–96. The reverse is blank — no wire-service stamp, no caption slug. A print of Jordan in the XI, from the 72–10 season, in a quiet moment nobody thought to frame.