The man who helped make Michael Jordan the marketing superstar he became has died.

George Raveling was 88.

His family said he passed away surrounded by family after battling cancer, TMZ reported.

“There are no words to fully capture what George meant to his family, friends, colleagues, former players, and assistants -- and to the world,” Raveling’s family said on social media.

“He will be profoundly missed, yet his aura, energy, divine presence, and timeless wisdom live on in all those he touched and transformed.”

Before becoming a coach, Raveling played for Villanova from 1957 to 1960, then was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors in 1960, but never played, The Associated Press reported.

Raveling was a longtime college basketball coach leading teams such as Washington State, Iowa and Southern California from 1972 to 1994, leaving the game after a serious car accident, USA Today reported.

The AP noted that he had a losing first season with each team but then made multiple trips to the NCAA tournament.

Over his coaching career, he had a record of 335-293 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

He was on the staff of U.S. Olympic basketball teams twice, in 1984 and 1988, the former included Michael Jordan and won the gold medal.

That is the time when Raveling also convinced Jordan to sign with Nike, introducing the superstar to Sonny Vaccaro at the company. The deal gave Jordan his own brand and, according to the AP, “changed the athletic apparel industry.”

“Prior to all of that, Sonny likes to take the credit. But it really wasn’t Sonny, it was actually George Raveling,” Jordan said in 2015. “George Raveling was with me on the 1984 Olympics team. He used to always try to talk to me, ‘You gotta go Nike, you gotta go Nike. You’ve got to try.’”

Raveling joined Nike as the company’s global basketball sports marketing director, USA Today reported.

He also had a connection to another piece of history. When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, Raveling was working security at the March on Washington. As King left the event, the future coach asked if he could have the speech and the reverend gave it to him.

Raveling eventually donated the speech to Villanova in 2021.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture displayed the speech on loan from the university, TMZ reported.

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