A USA Today columnist is outraged that Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark will sign a contract with Nike worth $28 million over 8 years. The deal includes her own signature shoe.
Sports columnist Mike Freeman complained that the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick got a shoe deal instead of Black stars in the WNBA.
“In a majority-Black league, there are currently no Black players with signature shoes,” he wrote in an editorial on Monday.
Freeman noted that the WNBA players with lucrative Nike shoe deals are white.
“Clark would join only three other WNBA players with signature shoes: Breanna Stewart, Elena Delle Donne, and Sabrina Ionescu. You may notice a pattern there,” he wrote.
Ionescu signed a $24 million shoe deal with Nike in 2020. 77 NBA players have worn her signature Sabrina 1s sneakers in games this year.
Freeman said the lack of a shoe deal for any Black WNBA player “shows how Black women are being ignored in a league that they dominate.”
He told his readers “you are a fool” if they think the white players got shoe deals because they’re the league’s stars.
Freeman noted that Las Vegas Aces superstar and league MVP A’ja Wilson doesn’t have a shoe deal. Wilson is Black.
Freeman claims “Wilson deserves it more and has for some time. She is, after all, the best overall player in the world.”
He said the lack of respect for Black WNBA players is obvious.
“What so much of this comes down to is a lack of respect for the Black women of the WNBA. A lack of respect for Black Americans overall isn’t something new to the marketing world. This is old hat. That doesn’t change the ugliness of it,” he added.
