Courtney Williams played in her second WNBA All-Star Game in July, but she had to do so with a degree of censorship on her feet.
Just a few weeks prior, the Minnesota Lynx guard received her first fine, $100, from the WNBA for wearing the pink and yellow Moolah Neovolt Pro v2 “Dragonfruit” during a game against the Washington Mystics.
The league doesn’t allow players to wear logos for a brand without a contract with the WNBA. Williams would go on to be fined four more times for displaying the logo of Moolah Kicks, which was founded in 2020 and touts itself as the first and only company that designs all of its basketball sneakers for women’s feet.
Word of the ban caught fire leading up to the WNBA All-Star Game, in large part due to a New York Times feature on the league’s crackdown. And with nearly a month now having passed, Moolah’s sales are booming.
Moolah’s direct-to-consumer sales jumped 700 percent in the week after the Times article compared to the same period the year prior, and total sales for July came in 329 percent higher than in the same month in 2024. From July 18 through Wednesday, sales remain 200 percent higher year-over year.
Courtney Williams (left) wearing the Moolah Neovolt Pro v2, logos intact, in the first game that drew a fine from the WNBA.
Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images
“It’s been overwhelming,” Moolah founder Natalie White told Footwear News in a call Tuesday. “We’ve had folks from across the country, all ages, all skill levels, reach out and say how much they love their Moolahs, how much they love the brand and what it means to them and the larger world of women’s basketball. We’ve just been floored by the outpouring.”
The response to the ban is an example of the “Streisand Effect,” a phenomenon in which an attempt at suppression only draws more attention to the matter at hand. It can be marketing, such as when Michael Jordan’s Air Jordan 1 was supposedly “banned” by the NBA. (In actuality, it was a similarly colored Nike Air Ship that drew fines from the NBA, and Jordan never wore the black and red Air Jordan 1 in an NBA game).
Nike is the official outfitter of the NBA, but there’s no limitations on what sneaker brands its players can wear. The Swoosh’s relationship with the WNBA is even deeper, as it became an equity investor in 2022.
Limiting Moolah’s visibility in the WNBA could also read as counterintuitive to the efforts to expand women’s basketball. This is a woman-owned company designing basketball sneakers for women with more eyes are on the game than ever. Other brands do make sneakers specifically for women, but there’s still a high number of female players at all levels wearing shoes designed for men’s feet.
“Courtney is one of the few WNBA players who is wearing shoes specifically fit for her,” White said. “And if you look at the highest level, what precedent does that set that people in the W are forced to wear sneakers that put on a greater risk of knee, ankle and leg injury.”
There are four WNBA players with signature shoes: Breanna Stewart (Puma), A’ja Wilson (Nike), Sabrina Ionescu (Nike) and Angel Reese (Reebok). Three are designed for women, while Ionescu’s Nike Sabrina line, now on its third model, is made unisex. Caitlin Clark, a Nike athlete who currently favors the Kobe line, is widely expected to get her signature sneaker debut in 2026.
The Moolah Neovolt Pro v2 “Dragonfruit” and three other colorways from the “Produce” pack.
In July, the three most worn sneakers in the WNBA (separated by colorway and ranked by minutes played) are all men’s shoes: Kobe Bryant’s Nike Kobe 6 Protro “All-Star 2.0,” Devin Booker’s Nike Book 1 “Sedona” and Donovan Mitchell’s Adidas D.O.N. Issue 6 “Screaming Green.” Wilson’s Nike A’One “Pearl” took the fourth spot and is the only shoe designed for women’s feet to appear in the top eight.
The Neovolt v2 is the Moolahs marquee model, and all of Moolah’s sneakers are engineered to the biomechanical fit of female feet with a narrower heel, lifted arch, shallower lateral and slimmer width.
Williams is allowed to continue wearing the Nevolt v2, or any other shoe from a brand without a WNBA contract, provided she covers or removes all recognizable logos. Moolah has covered the cost of fines incurred by the All-Star but also expects to receive shoes from its factory produced without the offending logos in the next several weeks.
White, based in New York City, sat courtside for the Lynx’s away game Sunday against the New York Liberty. She did so wearing the very same “Dragonfruit” kicks that drew the initial fine, as did Williams herself — albeit with the logos covered.
White plans to continue leaning into the WNBA community and demonstrating what Moolah stands for. Discussions are also in place to have more players wearing its sneakers next season.
White’s interest isn’t limited to her own business, though, and she hopes that the narrative around the brand creates a wave of more women demanding gear fit for their bodies.
