The best player in the WNBA now has her own shoe, and it took a long time

NEW YORK – A’ja Wilson, a centre for the Las Vegas Aces, is widely acknowledged as the best player in the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association). She is something like the league’s on-court answer to LeBron James or Michael Jordan.

She was the WNBA’s rookie of the year in 2018, was named league MVP in 2020 and 2022, and won a championship in 2022. But while she racked up achievement after achievement, one marker of basketball stardom eluded her: the shoe.

If Wilson were playing in the NBA, she would have long ago received a signature shoe, the on-court footwear designed with and for a player. More than two dozen NBA players have them.

For years, marketeers largely ignored the women’s game. But her star has risen alongside that of the league she plays in, and in early 2023, American athletic footwear and apparel corporation Nike finally told her that it planned to create a signature shoe for her.

“I probably cried for a couple of days,” she said.

The plan remained secret, and her fans got angry as Wilson continued to dominate on the court – winning another championship in 2023 – without any news of a shoe. They were appeased in May 2024, however, when Nike announced that it would release her signature shoe, the A’One, in May 2025, alongside an apparel collection.

The A’One went on sale last week, with a Pink A’ura version, making Wilson the first black WNBA player to have a signature shoe since 2011.

“It’s time for people to have a shoe and see a shoe from someone like me, considering it hasn’t been done in a long, long time and it comes from a black female athlete in this world,” she said. “I’m grateful.”

The 28-year-old was speaking in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighbourhood of Paris at a hotel suite overlooking Le Bon Marche, the famous department store. Her 1.93m frame was dressed in the athletes’ off-court uniform of sweats, with jewellery in her ears and on both sides of her nose. She was there on behalf of Nike. It was men’s fashion week, so outside the hotel, photographers waited behind a rope in case celebrities emerged.

WNBA players are bigger stars now than they ever were before, arguably with more cultural impact than they had even in the league’s heady early days in the 1990s, when players such as Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes became household names. Last season, interest in the league spiked, buoyed by the popularity of rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Brands rushed to play catch-up.

That resurgence has happened in the shoe industry too, where brands have struggled to monetise products connected to female athletes.

The first WNBA player to have a signature shoe made for her was Swoopes in 1995. Nike’s Air Swoopes had a tab on the back that made it easy to put on with the long fingernails she liked to sport. Nike created seven editions of it, the most it has made for any female player.

Women’s models make up a small portion of the basketball shoe business, said Mr Matt Powell, a retail analyst with BCE Consulting, in part because many female basketball players prefer wearing men’s shoes.

“It costs a tremendous amount of money to develop a shoe and then to build that shoe,” Mr Powell said. “If sales are not going to be huge, and that is the history of what we’ve seen, any brand is like, ‘How much of an investment can we make here?’”

That all started to change when women’s college basketball became more popular. Social media allowed players to create personal brands, and in 2021, the NCAA shifted its rules to allow athletes to capitalise on name, image and likeness (NIL) deals, increasing their visibility with commercials and other advertisements.

Broadcast channels helped too. ESPN began televising the NCAA women’s tournament in 1996 but did not air the championship game on its broadcast network, ABC, until 2023. Reese’s Louisiana State team defeated Clark’s Iowa for that title, drawing nearly 10 million viewers.

The 2024 championship game drew 18.9 million viewers, beating the men’s championship game by about 4 million, according to Nielsen. That interest has trickled up into the WNBA as the players moved there too.

In July 2023, Nielsen reported a rise in interest generally in women’s sports. It also said surveyed viewers were frustrated by a lack of access to live women’s sports and a lack of media coverage.

“Sneaker companies are always reactive to the public, and they’re always responsive to what they perceive as popular at a given time,” said Dr Brandon Wallace, an assistant professor at Indiana University who has studied the industry.

Wilson has not shied away from discussing the impact of race on why she is sometimes called not marketable.

“It’s 100 per cent about race,” she said. “And it’s one of those things where we can sit there and say that all the time, but there’s going to always be someone who’s like, ‘Well, no, you’re just making it about race.’”

As new opportunities have come her way, Wilson has used them to cultivate her image. She has especially leaned into the fashion world’s recent embrace of her; Vogue and GQ, for instance, featured her recently in a spread related to the Met Gala in New York City.

When she went on tour in 2024 for her book, Dear Black Girls, her team approached fashion designer Sergio Hudson – who has dressed former first lady Michelle Obama, former vice-president Kamala Harris and singer-songwriters Beyonce, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez – to outfit her.

He knew Wilson was stylish, and he liked the idea of supporting a WNBA player, especially one from his home state, South Carolina.

“When I saw her walk out in the first outfit we made for her, I was like, ‘This girl is a star,’” Hudson said.

“At that time, it wasn’t how it is now,” he said. “It wasn’t that long ago, but it’s like overnight, things have shifted and the WNBA girls are prime celebrities, and everybody wants to dress them.” NYTIMES