Sabrina Ionescu gets a signature shoe with Nike

The GIST: Everything’s coming up NY Liberty these days. While the team dominated WNBA free agency last week, a Thursday report revealed that Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu (pronounced yo-NESS-coo) will drop a signature shoe with Nike in the fall.

The details: The Sabrina 1 will be produced in six colorways, including “Oxygen Purple” and “Light Bone Laser Orange.” The kicks will be released through Nike and other select retailers and will sell for $125 a pop.

The trend: Ionescu’s new shoes add to a recent uptick in WNBA footwear production. Three new signature shoes hit the market just last year — Nike’s design with Washington Mystic Elena Delle Donne, Puma’s collab with Ionescu’s new teammate Breanna Stewart and Adidas’ second effort with Las Vegas Ace Candace Parker.

• The quartet join a stacked roster of eight WNBA vets who rocked their own signature kicks on the court, including six-time All-Star Sheryl Swoopes and three-time WNBA MVP Lisa Leslie.

The context: Nike’s drops with both Ionescu and Delle Donne mark a notable shift in the brand’s strategy. In the past, the sportswear giant regularly lowered Leslie’s footwear contract and hesitated to launch a signature shoe by arguing that only male athletes drove shoe sales, a direct result of their failure to adequately market her brand. Facepalm.

Zooming out: As the WNBA’s audience grows, a new batch of signature shoes will freshen up inventory for sneakerheads. Despite decelerating sales, kicks remain a lucrative industry — footwear companies globally raked in $152.4 billion in 2022 and should surpass that figure this year.

• That said, it’s hard to ignore the glaring racial disparity as WNBA signature shoes have their moment. Most of the active players with footwear deals are white, despite Black players comprising 74.5% of the league’s player pool. Oughta be a changin’.