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Message: [QUOTE="Carnac, post: 3138698, member: 5798"] [SIZE=4][B]Not a Single W.N.B.A. Star Has a Shoe Line to Call Her Own - Aug 2017[/B][/SIZE] In 1995, Sheryl Swoopes became the first female athlete to have a basketball shoe named after her. In the W.N.B.A.’s early seasons, Nike, Adidas, Reebok and Fila released shoes with Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Cynthia Cooper, Nicki McCray, Rebecca Lobo and Chamique Holdsclaw. In 2011, Maya Moore, a three-time W.N.B.A. champion with the Minnesota Lynx, became the first female basketball player to sign an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand. [SIZE=4]Now, in the 21st season of the W.N.B.A., [B]not one player[/B] has a line to call her own. Why the backpedal? In the late 1990s, the sneaker business was not the giant of today, and the W.N.B.A. was new. “The real question is why didn’t it go forward, and the real answer is they didn’t sell enough shoes to make it worth their while,” said Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst at NPD Group. “I’m hopeful it will change. If a brand figures this out and starts to make a lot of money, everyone else is going to follow suit.” [/SIZE] [URL='https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/sports/basketball/wnba-shoe-deals.html'][Article][/URL] [SIZE=4][URL='https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/panng8/sheryl-swoopes-nike-shoe-wnba-sneaker-endorsements']The WNBA Icon Who Should Have Changed the Endorsement Deal Game[/URL] [B]- March 29, 2019[/B][/SIZE] [/QUOTE]