Breanna Stewart is leaving Nike to sign with Puma, and will receive a signature shoe with her new outfitter.
Seattle Storm star Breanna Stewart is signing with Puma and will receive her own signature shoe, the company announced on Wednesday.
It will be the first original women’s product made from scratch in more than a decade, the previous being Candace Parker’s signature TS Ace Commander in 2010.
“I am proud to join the Puma family,” Stewart said in a release. “We share a vision to grow the sport and welcome everyone—specifically women and girls—globally. The genuine investment Puma has shown to collaborate with and activate around women, including the commitment to a signature performance shoe, is something that I hope serves to raise the expectations and standards of the generations of basketball players who follow me.”
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Other top WNBA players have had player exclusive shoes in recent years, but Stewart will become just the 10th player in league history to have a signature design.
Puma and Stewart are in the early stages of designing her shoe, a process that typically takes more than a year to design and develop.
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Stewart's Seattle teammate, Sue Bird, recently told Sports Illustrated's Jarrel Harris that she believed Stewart should be among the next WNBA players to get a signature sneaker.
After winning both the 2018 WNBA MVP and finals MVP awards, Stewart missed the 2019 WNBA season with a ruptured Achilles. She returned last year and led the Storm to its second title in three seasons. This winter, she went on to win both EuroLeague Final Four MVP and Russian Premier League MVP with Russia's UMMC Ekaterinburg.
The WNBA season gets underway on Friday, with Stewart and the Storm set to make their regular-season debut on Saturday vs. the Aces.
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