Nike outlines ‘Sabrina's Laws of the Game’ as it drops Sabrina Ionescu’s signature shoe

At 5-foot-11, Sabrina Ionescu has never been the most imposing basketball player, but she is one of the most creative and crafty players ever to lace up a pair of sneakers. Nike celebrates that in a new campaign, “Sabrina’s Laws of the Game,” which is tied to the release of the New York Liberty point guard’s signature Nike shoe—only the second female athlete in a decade to get her own Nike sneaker, following Elena Delle Donne last year. A centerpiece of the ad campaign is the anthem spot below, from Wieden+Kennedy Portland, which advises young players to listen up and learn Sabrina’s rules for how to change the game. You’ll notice the cameo from 7-Eleven’s Slurpee drink—that’s a reference to the famous story of Ionescu and her twin brother hustling adults at basketball courts when they were kids to win money to buy Slurpees. The signature shoe, the Sabrina 1—available in two colorways, the Ionic and the Spark—drops Friday. It features, perhaps most notably, a vertically slanted Swoosh—meant to represent the barriers Ionescu has broken throughout her career. It also has a dotted “i” (for Ionescu) that wraps around the top and bottom outsole of the shoe and intricate embroidery patterns on the forefoot and eye-stays, paying homage to traditional Romanian art and architecture. The shoe is also, in a first for a signature sneaker, unisex. “Growing up, I played basketball, and there were so many young boys and men that were like, ‘You shouldn’t be playing with us,’” Ionescu told CBS Mornings this week. “So when I was in the process of designing this shoe, I wanted anyone anywhere to be able to put this shoe on and accomplish whatever it is that they wanted to. And so that was the first thing that I told Nike is, I want this shoe to be unisex.” She added: “There’s so many hidden designs in the shoe ... I’m excited to be able to tell my story to the world.”

Nike outlines ‘Sabrina's Laws of the Game’ as it drops Sabrina Ionescu’s signature shoe

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