COLUMBIA, S.C. – A’ja Wilson has come to comprehend what’s delayed isn’t at all times denied.
The 2-time WNBA champion and three-time league MVP proudly launched her long-awaited Nike signature shoe and athletic attire assortment in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, the place she helped lead the South Carolina Gamecocks to their first nationwide championship in 2017 and had her faculty jersey retired on Sunday.
The discharge of the predominantly pink shoe and attire assortment — which she stated displays her “girly, girly aspect” — has been 10 months within the making since she signed the profitable six-year contract with Nike. It is a deal Wilson says indicators the continued development and curiosity in ladies’s sports activities.
“It was only a matter of time, truthfully,” Wilson stated. “As a result of we’re in it and we dwell it, we see how a lot we’re valued and value. However now to see everybody within the basketball group lastly catch up, it means the world. To say that I can put out a shoe, and to do that right here at house, it is really particular and I am so excited to see what the long run has to carry.”
The worth of the shoe will probably be $110 for grownup sizes and $90 for youth sizes. It will likely be accessible for buy within the spring.
At 28, Wilson is without doubt one of the most recognizable faces in ladies’s sports activities. She gained an ESPY in 2024 for Finest Feminine Athlete and led the Las Vegas Aces to back-to-back WNBA championships in 2022 and 2023. She has been named an All-Star six instances since getting into the league after being chosen the No. 1 total draft choose in 2018.
Many within the ladies’s sports activities world puzzled what has taken so lengthy for Wilson to get her personal shoe deal. Final yr’s sensational WNBA Rookie of the Yr Caitlin Clark had a deal for a Nike signature shoe forward of Wilson.
The delay did not shock A’ja’s father, Roscoe Wilson, who known as his daughter a meticulous planner.
“Ever since A’ja was a toddler, she’s been that approach,” Roscoe Wilson stated. “She would have toys and collectibles as a child and she or he would line them up and look them and ensure they have been lined up accurately, then change them round. So I at all times simply took that as her approach. She’s at all times been meticulous in her planning. She sees how she needs issues to go earlier than she finishes.”
“So it is a product of her imaginative and prescient from a very long time in the past,” he proudly added.
His daughter’s imaginative and prescient isn’t just a giant deal for the Wilson household.
Wilson’s “A-One” is vital for girls’s sports activities, nevertheless it’s additionally vital for sports activities basically, stated Joe Favorito, a longtime sports activities advertising govt and professor at Columbia College.
“Firms have been slicing again on customized traces for years and you do not see this fairly often anymore,” Favorito stated. “They must know there’s going to be a giant return. Firms must be very selective. So that is spectacular — and it is vitally uncommon.”
Favorito believes the shoe will significantly attraction to younger ladies and folks of coloration.
“It speaks to the varied viewers, not just for ladies but additionally folks of coloration,” Favorito stated. “They’re making a shoe that younger ladies can put on, can really feel snug in — and that’s revolutionary.”
Wilson’s shoe deal comes about after Clark signed the richest sponsorship contract for a ladies’s basketball participant in historical past final April value $28 million over eight years.
Wilson stated she liked the method of selecting out the colours and serving to design the shoe and assortment, however acknowledged that the discharge is “a weight off her shoulders.”
Among the many many distinctive options within the design is a duplicate of the tattoos she wears on her arms —- a tribute to her dad and mom for supporting her by the years — stitched onto the tongue of the footwear.
“To see it lastly go dwell, it is enjoyable and I couldn’t wait,” Wilson stated. “The jersey retirement was nice, however to have folks get solutions to their questions on what this shoe is about, it makes my coronary heart actually completely happy.”
Added her father Roscoe Wilson: “The platform she has and the area she is in I believe she has used it brilliantly to make a press release about herself, which carries over to ladies’s sports activities. She relays her message by how she carries herself and the way she performs.”
___
Copyright 2025 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.