Major Details Emerge About Caitlin Clark's Signature Nike Shoe
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Ever since Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark signed an eight-year, $28 million deal with Nike, fans have been anxiously awaiting news about when her signature shoe will finally be released.
Nike has taken some heat over the last few months with the company seemingly no closer to releasing that shoe, despite the fact it's been heavily promoting Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson's A'One shoe.
Clark's rival Angel Reese even has her own signature shoe line with Reebok, which includes her Shaqnosis and Premier Road Plus offerings, but the shoe most WNBA fans are still waiting on is Clark's.
However, some major new details were announced on Wednesday that should give those fans something to look forward to as it was revealed Clark's signature Nike shoe is expected to drop sometime in the spring of 2026, according to a report from Front Office Sports.
Top NBA and WNBA footwear insider Nick DePaula told FOS that he believes Nike is putting so much time into the development of Clark's shoe because of the massive financial implications it could have on the industry.
"They want to get it right," DePaula said. "... I think when Caitlin's shoe comes out it can be a $150 million business. It could become a top five signature franchise across basketball."
Demand for Clark's signature shoe when it finally drops is expected to be sky-high.
Caitlin Clark #22 of the Indiana Fever dribbles against the Golden State Valkyries in the second quarter at Chase Center on June 19, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Caitlin Clark #22 of the Indiana Fever dribbles against the Golden State Valkyries in the second quarter at Chase Center on June 19, 2025 in San Francisco, California.More WNBA: Fever's Sophie Cunningham Hit With Surprise News After Defending Caitlin Clark
Her player edition of the Nike Kobe V Protro shoes in Indiana Fever colors, which retail for $190, sold out within minutes on Monday. Because so many fans want those particular shoes, prices on the re-sale market are reaching as much as $350 per pair, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Clark has worn Kobe models for years, dating back to her time with the Iowa Hawkeyes, where she was a three-time unanimous first-team All-American, AP All-American, and Big Ten Player of the Year, and a two-time AP Player of the Year, Naismith College Player of the Year, USBWA National Player of the Year, and Big Ten Female Athlete of the Year.
Front Office Sports also reported that Nike is expected to release two more Clark-themed shoes before her signature shoe drops next year. The navy Fever colorway Nike Kobe 6 Protro will be released later this month, and a grey colorway is scheduled for release in the fall.
Clark, who's averaging 18.2 points, 8.9 assists, 5.0 rebounds, and 1.6 steals per game in her nine appearances this season, was recently named a captain for the WNBA All-Star Game.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
13 minutes ago
- USA Today
Caitlin Clark injury update: Fever star ruled out of showdown vs. Aces
The Indiana Fever, the newly minted 2025 Commissioner's Cup Champions, return home to Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Thursday, July 3 to face off against the Las Vegas Aces without Caitlin Clark. Clark will sit out her fourth consecutive game Thursday due to a left groin injury, which also kept her out of the Fever's 74-59 win over the Minnesota Lynx in the 2025 Commissioner's Cup final on July 1. She's set to miss her ninth game of the season after a quad injury sidelined her five games last month. The Fever have gone 4-4 without Clark in the lineup, but eagerly await her return to the court. "(I'm) doing everything I can to put myself in a position to play the next game every single time," Clark said on June 29. "That's always my goal — to be available for the next game. Doing everything I can with the medical staff to be able to get my body right and be able to do that." Despite being listed as "day-to-day," Clark was ruled out of Thursday's matchup one day before the game. Fever head coach Stephanie White said July 2 that the team was taking a cautious approach with Clark and putting "her long-term health and wellness at the forefront." "I think it's five games before All-Star break," White continued, "so let's just ease her mind even though she's antsy, and let's do this the right way and make sure we're ready to go and 100% when she comes back." Here's everything you need to know about the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year's playing status: 2025 WNBA COMMISSIONER'S CUP: Highlights, recap as Fever beat Lynx OPINION: Conspiracy theory about Clark, jealous players much ado about nothing Is Caitlin Clark playing vs. Las Vegas Aces? No. Clark was ruled out for Thursday's matchup against the Aces, the second meeting between the two teams this season. The Fever lost the first matchup 89-81 in Las Vegas on June 22. Clark had 19 points, 10 assists and three rebounds in the loss. The game is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, July 3. It can be streamed on Prime Video. Caitlin Clark injury update: What happened? Head coach Stephanie White said she first learned of Clark's groin injury on June 25 following the Fever's 94-86 win over the Seattle Storm on June 24, where Clark finished with six points (3-of-13 FG, 0-of-6), nine assists, three steals and two rebounds in 31 minutes of play. Clark previously suffered a quad injury during the Fever's 90-88 loss to the New York Liberty on May 24. Clark returned to the Fever's lineup on June 14 in the Fever's 102-88 win over the Liberty after missing five games, which officially ended her longest stretch of missed due to injury in her collegiate or WNBA career. She dropped 32 points, nine assists and eight rebounds in her first game back. "No one said this season was going to be perfect for us. There's going to be ups and downs," Clark said on June 29. "From injuries or coaches not being here for a couple of games. Everybody has been through a little bit of adversity here. So I think just giving our group credit for being able to stick together and know that whatever we have in our locker room is really all we need to go out there and win. I'm just proud of our group." Caitlin Clark stats Clark ranks second in the WNBA in assists per game to start the 2025 season. Here's a look at the 2024 Rookie of the Year's full stats (per game): The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.
New York Times
18 minutes ago
- New York Times
Will Cleveland's new WNBA team be the Rockers? How did it earn an expansion franchise?
This has been a historic week in the WNBA. In one day, the league announced three new expansion teams, from the 13 playing now, to 18 by 2030. It continues up-and-to-the-right growth for the W since 2020. The first franchise which will begin play among those three franchises is in Cleveland in 2028. This marks the WNBA's return to the city, where the Cleveland Rockers were one of the eight original teams before they disbanded in 2003. Advertisement If the early interest in tickets is any indication, Cleveland seems ready for a WNBA team again. Nic Barlage, the CEO of Rock Entertainment Group, which owns the new franchise and the Cavaliers, said they already had more than 3,100 season ticket deposits as of Wednesday morning. It is the culmination of what he said was a process that began three years ago as the company grew more interested and invested in women's sports as part of its portfolio of sports properties. Barlage spoke to The Athletic about how Cleveland got a WNBA team, why it bid for one, whether it'll bring the Rockers name back, and why he feels it was the right time to invest in a WNBA franchise. (This interview was edited for clarity and length.) Congrats on the new WNBA team coming to Cleveland. Obviously, this has all been a long time in the making. Can you walk me through how you guys landed this team? As we were looking at our portfolio, we really started to see the momentum and the movement that was happening around women's sports, and so we partnered with the WTA 250 event here locally, called Tennis in the Land, which we've had a wonderful experience with. We're actually more of the sales and execution agency for them. We were part of the NWSL bid to bring women's professional soccer to Cleveland. Ultimately, that wasn't successful, but it was a great learning for us. But internally, through all these partnerships and endeavors, we've really been focused on the WNBA. Our chairman, Dan Gilbert, has a deep, deep, deep, profound passion for basketball, and we have a deep, profound passion for leveling the playing field, if you will, and providing equal opportunity for both men and women. Our Cavs youth academy, which is 60,000 kids across the state of Ohio, upstate New York, Western (Pennsylvania). The largest growing segment of that has been young girls, who've been growing about 30 percent in participation rates year over year for the last two or three years. And so we noticed all this convergence of all of these things coming together. Advertisement When we hosted the women's Final Four in 2024, it was historic viewership. We sold out the tournament in the fastest it's ever sold out. … Obviously we had a lot of unique opportunities in hosting Caitlin Clark and the undefeated University of South Carolina Dawn Staley-led Gamecocks. But all those things kind of said, alright, we're going to push our chips all in on something. When we push our chips all in on something, especially with having the backing of Dan and all that he thinks about, dreams about, and the vision that he has, this crystallized pretty quickly. And from there it just got down to how we wanted to execute the bid, and how big and bold we can make it. 🚨HISTORIC MOMENT ALERT🚨 The W is leveling UP — three new teams, three new cities, one unstoppable future. ⭐ Say hello to our newest expansion teams: 🟣 @clevelandwnba – coming 2028 🔵 @DetroitWNBA – coming 2029 🔴 @philawnba – coming 2030 New energy. New legacies. New era.… — WNBA (@WNBA) June 30, 2025 The bidding process for this latest round seemed to get pretty frothy. There was, I think, the most intense interest I've seen in getting a WNBA team to date. When did you guys find out that you had landed a team? And what do you think put you over the top? We found out right around (NBA) All-Star in February, maybe a little bit after that was the final confirmation. Obviously, there's a lot you have to work through once you're kind of selected. You've got legal documents, those kinds of things. But from our perspective, we think it's very symbolic of the Midwest. We think Cleveland is a city on the rise. We think we had such a great run in the early 1900s, we went through some tough times, and now we're kind of back in a bold way. And if you study Cleveland at all, what people realize is sports and entertainment is really leading the resurgence and creating the momentum in this community. When we throw the ball in the air in April 2028 or May of 2028, Dan and the Gilbert family will have invested $1.1 billion in sports and entertainment infrastructure. Not like buying teams and moving them here, but like real infrastructure in Northeast Ohio. And so when you start to think about the infrastructure we have, the fan base that is unrelentingly passionate about sports. We were the most ready-made bid. So is it going to be the Cleveland Rockers 2.0? It's a great question. We're not going to commit to a brand identity at this point. We love the history of the Rockers, obviously, being one of the original eight. But at this stage in the process, we are absolutely going to have a dimension of our brand and our intellectual property that will pay homage to the Rockers, but we want to be very considerate of where Cleveland is going, where our fan base is going, as opposed to where it's been. And so for us, it's a little bit of that balance. Like paying honor and homage to the past while really focused on our bright future. And so from that perspective, we're going to go through a pretty intensive, thoughtful, inclusive process over the next six months. Advertisement Just trying to read a little bit into what you're saying, it sounds like it won't be the Rockers … No, I didn't say that. The Rockers will definitely be an option. The Rockers will definitely be a part of the mix of the options we look at. We just don't know if that's the right move for us yet. We haven't been able to publicly talk about this for a long time. We want to embrace the community. We want to be inclusive of their thoughts and their insights before we just pick a path, but Rockers will absolutely be under consideration. The reason I ask is — you guys might be the Rockers, you might not. The Portland expansion team looks like it's leaning towards bringing the Fire name back. I don't know if Detroit will be the Shock as well. But there is some nostalgia coating for some of these new WNBA teams. Do you think reboots can work for WNBA teams now, bringing back a less successful but sepia-toned era of the league? I absolutely think retro works. I think it can work depending on the situation. But I think for us, there's such a new fan base here in Cleveland. Cleveland has a different vibe to it now. They have a different vibrancy to the city. The communities that are going to be attracted to this demographic of this product, they might even look a little bit different or be a bit more involved. And so we just want to make sure, like I said, we're being thoughtful and inclusive of that. I would never commit to that without getting real data and getting real insights. Honestly, I could speak to the other markets, it would be irresponsible. Were you surprised the W went to three teams in the end? Did you think it would be just the 16 teams and were you surprised that they went all the way up to 18? No, I wasn't. As you look at it, whenever this much interest — and this much interest is being met by a real business performance … When I was doing an interview the other day, I mentioned there was a Sunday night Fever and Sky game, I think it may have been about a month ago, on a Sunday, it did 1.7 million viewers. I think Yankees-Red Sox hit 1.3 million viewers. When you're seeing this much insatiable demand for something, I wasn't surprised at all. When the league is led by commissioner (Cathy) Engelbert, and obviously is a part of the broader NBA family led by (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver and (NBA deputy commissioner) Mark Tatum, they're very thoughtful about these things. They put a lot of strategy and rigor into it. And so when they came back into three teams, and all three already had NBA infrastructure wrapped around them, it made a lot of sense. And by the way, they're great cities. They're great markets. I think it made a lot of sense. You mentioned the NBA infrastructure. I think it's been unmissable that five of the six expansion teams in the last three years, or six of the six, depending how you want to do your accounting practices, have gone to owners with NBA ties. Do you think that's been intentional? Is there something that has given NBA ownership groups who want a WNBA team a leg up in that process? Are NBA owners the best served to own and run WNBA teams right now? Our thesis on this is absolutely. And I think Adam shares a similar thesis. We have commercial infrastructure. We have administrative infrastructure. We have marketing infrastructure. We have venues, right? And so when you start thinking about the infrastructure we can wrap around these assets — and by the way, we have decades of institutional knowledge of how to operate them, both on the business side, but also on the basketball side. There's no doubt there's nuances and there's differences across the board, but, yeah, I think it's very intentional in regards to how the league is expanding. An existing NBA owner is also a minority owner of the WNBA in the current financial structure. So there's a lot of incentive from our perspective to be a part of the growth of the WNBA, and I think Adam is really driving that in partnership with Cathy. The $250 million expansion fee is a really interesting number. It's obviously the largest in WNBA history, and five times more than what the Golden State group paid to get the Valkyries. I've been reporting on WNBA expansion for a while, and there was kind of this apprehension about even getting to $50 million back in 2022. Interested investors didn't know if it would be worth it, if the business of a team and the league could support that kind of valuation. And now you have three teams, three ownership groups, paying that $250 million. There were more than 10 bidders, if I remember correctly. Why did you think that that kind of expansion fee was worth it? And why do you think valuations have risen so much? I won't confirm the fee, but what I will say is, from our chairman, Dan, throughout the entire organization, we have a firm belief that money and numbers, they don't lead, they follow in situations like this. And we look at being the 16th team as being very much still an early mover. When you look at minority stakes that have been reported, that have been sold, whether it's for the Liberty, whether it's for the Seattle Storm in the last couple of months, we think this is an early-mover type of situation, and one that we're fully embracing. Advertisement Once again, it wasn't driven by the money and the numbers. It was driven by the impact we can make in our community, also the trajectory of the game. I mentioned the viewership earlier, but if you look at all the major key performance indicators across the league: attendance, viewership, merchandise, sales — everything is on this rocket ship type of trajectory. So for us, it was about how fast can we get involved and how quickly can we build a platform that inspires the next generation of young girls and young women across the entire state of Ohio and throughout our region? It also is another dimension. We own a local sports network in Rock Entertainment Sports Network. It's another dimension for us to be able to host on there as well. It's a key component and a key asset of this portfolio and this broader platform that we've been building for quite some time now, and it's the perfect complement. So when you have those types of dynamics, you do your diligence, you make sure you're being responsible with the financial resources that you're deploying. But we are firm believers that the best days of this league are in front of us. … If this thing gets to 25, 30 teams, which we think it will, that is all green field opportunity in regards to expansion of regular-season games, expansion of playoff games, expansion of media rights. What you're seeing right now is the fundamental and foundational return of the WNBA, and it's going to be a foundation that's going to launch it to new heights, sustainable heights. I know there's some owners out there that are aspiring for billion-dollar valuations over a period of time, we fully support that. But once again, for us, it's not about the money and the numbers, it's about the impact that we can create, and we think that impact will lead to much higher trajectories of valuation as we go forward. This is more than basketball. Nic Barlage, Chief Executive Officer of @RockEntGroup spoke on the @WNBA's return to Cleveland and the impact it will make on this city and it's community. — Cleveland WNBA (@clevelandwnba) June 30, 2025 I was going to ask if you think a billion-dollar valuation for a WNBA team might be possible in the future, but maybe I'm setting my sights too low. Look, anytime you have viewership that is hitting these levels, anytime you have attendance that is hitting these levels, and you have a very finite amount of assets, this becomes a scarcity investment at the end of the day. When you have that type of scarcity and that type of stickiness and that type of growth, great things can happen. (Photo of Cathy Englebert, left, and Nic Barlage: Mike Lawrence / NBAE via Getty Images)
CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
Caitlin Clark: Commissioner's Cup pay ‘makes no sense'
WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark took time out of celebrating her Indiana Fever's Commissioner's Cup win to call out the desire for better pay for the league's athletes. The injured Clark didn't play in the Fever's win Tuesday over the Minnesota Lynx, but in the postgame celebration on Instagram livestream, she pointed out the disparity in the financial rewards for winning the Commissioner's Cup and winning the WNBA Finals. 'You get more (money) for this than you do if you're the (WNBA Finals) champion,' Clark said to the camera Tuesday night. 'It makes no sense. Someone tell (WNBA commissioner) Cathy (Engelbert) to help us out.' Each rostered player on the winning Commissioner's Cup team earned up to $30,000 as part of the majority portion of the $500,000 purse, per multiple reports. For comparison, players on the team that wins the WNBA championship reportedly receive $20,825. In another postgame video Tuesday, Clark referred to the in-season tournament final as the 'Cathy Cup.' Clark's comments come as WNBA players are negotiating for a new collective bargaining agreement amid surging popularity in the league. The WNBA registered its highest attendance in 26 years for an opening month to the season as well as record TV ratings. The league announced in June that 400,000 fans attended games since the season tipped off on May 14 through the end of the month, its highest since nearly the league's inception; the WNBA began play in 1997. Further, more than half of all WNBA games were sellouts, a 156 percent increase year over year, according to the release. Additionally, games are averaging 1.32 million viewers across all network partners, nearly tripling last season's average (462,000 viewers), per the league's June 10 release. Clark won't be back on the court when the Fever return to action Thursday against the visiting Las Vegas Aces. She will miss her fourth game in a row (counting the non-regular-season Commissioner's Cup final) because of a left groin ailment. A strained left quad kept Clark out for five games from May 28-June 10.
