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basketball and sneakers as men are.
“Women have been showing Jordan
Brand love for years, and we knew that to
show them love in return, we needed to
learn everything we could about how to
serve them best,” Andrea Perez, General
Manager and Vice President of JordanBrand Women’s and Kids, told SLAM
last year. “We spent hours with women
around the world to get their insights.”
Because just like so many other peo-
ple, Nurse remembers idolizing Jordan
when she was falling in love with the
game as a kid, all the way in Ontario. SNurse leaves the court at Nike’s NYHQ
and switches out of the Air Jordan
XXXIIIs she’s wearing in favor of the
recently released “NYC to Paris” Air
Jordan I. She walks up to the roof of the
building and poses for photos with her
new home, New York, in the background.
She had a solid rookie campaign for
the Libs last summer, posting 9.1 points
per game. She showed flashes of what’s
to come when she dropped 34 points on
the Fever, 28 points on the Mercury and
25 points on the Wings.
Now in her second season, Nurse has
upped her production through the first 10
games. Her ppg average is now at 16.1
and she’s taken on a larger role for the
Liberty, all while rotating between the Air
Jordan XXXIII and the Jordan Why Not
Zer0.2.
“Right now I’m really into the XXXIIIs,”
Nurse says. “I love the way they feel,
I love not having to do my laces up,
because I’m kind of lazy sometimes. I
absolutely love the Russell Westbrooks
as well.”
The XXXIIIs don’t have laces. They rely
instead on Jordan Brand’s new FastFit
technology that makes use of parachute
cables to tighten and loosen the sneaker
with a pull tab. And the Zer0.2s, with
their lightweight textile upper and Flight-
Speed technology, come in a plethora of
colorways, allowing for the silhouette’s
nontraditional design to shine. Nurse is
already seeing the benefits of linking up
with Mike in all the gear and the kicks,
but the biggest benefit is the platform
that the Brand is giving the 23-year-old.
“I love being able to be a face that
young women can look at and say she
did it, so why can’t I? There are so many
important things about sports,” Nurse
says. “It’s the transferable life skill that
each and every young woman, as a role
model, has the opportunity to learn
through playing sports. So when they go
into their lives and say, OK, I want to play
this sport because that’s my life or I want
to be a teacher or I want to be a doctor,
they already have teamwork and cooper-
ation and communication down. And as a
part of this Brand, I love what they do to
empower women.”
In addition to Nurse, Durr and Moore,
the Brand also works closely with design-
er Aleali May, singer Billie Eilish and
Michael’s daughter, Jasmine. They all
have input on the direction of the
sneakers and the clothing and the voice.
They’re making a concerted effort to be
sure that women are as much a part of PRVIOUS SPREAD FROM LEFT: STEVEN FREEMAN; JUAN O’CAMPO; THIS PAGE: MATTEO MARCHI/ALL NBA VIA GETTY IMAGES