Sheryl Swoopes never wore Nikes as a kid growing up in Brownfield, Texas. “I didn't even know what Nike was,” she says.
O.K., perhaps she’d heard of the brand, but she never wore the shoes, insists Swoopes. Her mother, Louise, raised four children on her own, and practicality won out over the latest footwear trend. Even in college, at Texas Tech, Sheryl wore a more affordable pair of Converse. As a senior in 1993, she won the national title in white-and-red Accelerator RS1 hi-cuts.
That all changed two years later, though, when Nike announced the Air Swoopes, just in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and ahead of what would be a groundbreaking year for women’s basketball.