“Now,” Mr. O’Neal mentioned, “it’s bloggers, emcees, athletes, designers.”
On the N.B.A.’s All-Megastar weekend in February, as Mr. O’Neal and Mr. Iverson made the rounds dressed in Reebok varsity jackets that have been customized with their respective titles, Reebok spared an N.B.A.-themed collaboration with Victor Solomon, the Los Angeles artist. (The jackets have been Mr. O’Neal’s concept.)
Megastar gamers, even though, are nonetheless a useful piece of the puzzle, and Reebok made an instantaneous, and slightly sudden, first leak again in October by means of partnering with Angel Reese, one of the crucial common younger gamers within the ladies’s recreation. A former all-American at L.S.U., Ms. Reese not too long ago joined the Chicago Sky of the W.N.B.A. as a first-round draft pick out.
Mr. O’Neal first met Ms. Reese when he accompanied his daughter Me’Arah, a lead highschool chance, on a recruiting shuttle to his alma mater. Even though Ms. O’Neal nearest dedicated to the College of Florida, her father become one thing of a educator to Ms. Reese.
“She’s like a daughter to me,” Mr. O’Neal mentioned. “She’s fearless. She’s herself.”
Reebok, at Mr. O’Neal’s behest, signed Ms. Reese to an N.I.L. offer in October, making her the primary participant, guy or girl, to be backed by means of the corporate within the Shaq while.
“No one was expecting a college player, and no one was expecting a woman,” Ms. Reese mentioned in an e mail, including, “The world’s overwhelmingly positive reaction to it meant so much to me.”
Mr. Krinsky described Ms. Reese as a “provocative” presence who suits with the corporate’s ethos of being disruptive. He cited Reebok’s 2001 collaboration with the rapper Jadakiss, who filmed a business to advertise the leave of Mr. Iverson’s signature sneaker, the Solution V. The economic was once completely timed because the N.B.A. was once leaning into its reference to hip-hop and Unlit tradition, a shift led by means of gamers like Mr. Iverson.
