JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Sometimes the real measure of a sports cultural rise isn't stats, it's style. It's what people are wearing, how they wear it and when. In basketball, sneakers go far beyond function. On the court, shoes can feel like superpowers, allowing players to reach a new dimension of play, and that includes the WNBA. That's why Nike is dropping three of its most popular basketball silhouettes just in time for the WNBA all-star weekend in Indianapolis, including the New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu - Sabrina 3s in a fiery heat orange. And the buzz is real. Dozens of NBA players have been lacing up Ionescu's Sabrina 1s. Rashad Grove is a sneakerhead (ph) and WNBA contributor at Sports Illustrated, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
RASHAD GROVE: Hey. So excited to be on - thank you for having me.
SUMMERS: I wonder, to your mind, is this boom driven more by smart business or savvy PR or maybe a mix of the two?
GROVE: Definitely a mix of the two - they're like two sides of the same coin. You would be foolish if you're not Nike to really invest in these women who do phenomenal things in the WNBA. I live in New Jersey, and I go to Liberty games all the time. And I tell people, the Liberty games are the most exciting basketball games I ever been to. I'm talking Knicks. I grew up around Philly, so I went to Sixers games. But when you go into the Liberty games, you see when Sabrina hits that 3 and mostly everybody in there has those sneakers on - brilliant marketing, brilliant business savvy, but that cannot happen without the brilliance of the women on the court.
SUMMERS: I mean, and to that point, it's really the players' game that sells a shoe. Can you talk a little bit about how stars like Sabrina Ionescu, A'ja Wilson have built their shoes' mystique through just how dominant we see them as players on the court?
GROVE: Juana, it doesn't matter how great a sneaker looks. If the player who's behind them can't play or doesn't have the resume, the stats to go behind it, it really doesn't matter. And with A'ja Wilson being probably the best player in the WNBA and Sabrina in the top tier - and just imagine, we've seen them not only play at high levels in the WNBA - they're both champions - but watching them in the Olympics, I really think pushed their sneaker fandom over the edge. And you saw plenty of people wear the Sabrina's, from Drew Holiday, Tyler Herro, and they were wearing them at the Olympics. So giving the Sabrina 1 and 2s that much more coverage on the international scale really stepped it up a couple levels and notches.
SUMMERS: Rashad, we've been talking about some of the veterans, but we've also got to talk about folks like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, who already have signature deals. And they're just in their second year - Clark's deal with Nike, Reese's with Reebok. What does that tell us about the bet that each brand is making on these players long-term?
GROVE: The wager they're placing on Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark is that this is not just a blip on the program. This is a movement that's here to stay. And Angel Reese with Reebok, the timing couldn't be better with Shaq - Shaquille O'Neal and Allen Iverson being president and vice president over those brands - 'cause Reebok was a strong No. 2, as Shaq would say, in the '90s, but now it's getting back to its old ways. See, my generation, we wore Iversons and Shaqs. But now, can you imagine that in 2024 and 2025, everyone will associate the Reebok brand with Angel Reese, two years out of college?
SUMMERS: I wonder, to your mind, did sneaker companies get this right right away, or has their appreciation of the power of the WNBA and women's athletics evolved over time?
GROVE: Evolved over time, slow to the game - I remember Sheryl Swoopes in the '90s had a signature pair. And Candace Parker, she's now the president of women's basketball at Adidas. She had a pair. But you didn't really see a lot of promo and a lot of kind of marketing behind those women, even though they were elite and were in the infancy stages of the WNBA - especially Swoopes in 1997, I think Candace was around 2002 through 2004. So the league is just getting off the ground.
But what really accelerated the growth is NIL and the women being able to make money while in college and even in high school, in some cases. Nike and other brands finally not only saw their talent but, as they are prone to do, see dollar signs. And they're investing and not waiting for them to be established all-star to get the signature shoe. No, you got to get them shoes right now while the iron is hot. And I see that with Puma, with their athletes, and Kelsey Plum who's with Under Armour. So it's an evolution - a slow evolution, but now we see this avalanche effect that's happening with women's sneakers.
SUMMERS: Rashad Grove is a contributing writer at Sports Illustrated. Thank you so much for joining us.
GROVE: The pleasure's been all mine. Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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