NOT ANOTHER SWEATSHIRT
How the orange WNBA hoodie became symbol of strength for women
Excerpted from HOOP MUSES: An Insider’s Guide to Pop Culture and the (Women’s) Game ©2023 Kate Fagan, Seimone Augustus, and Sophia Chang. Reprinted by permission from Twelve Books/ Hachette Book Group.
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The seeds of the phenomenon were planted during a routine exchange in 2019. Kobe Bryant had visited the WNBA league offices in New York City, and as he was leaving, Eb Jones handed the legend three bags of W gear, including a statement orange hoodie with the WNBA silhouette.
At the time, Jones oversaw the league’s content and influencer strategy. Delivering the gear to Kobe was a Hail Mary — no way would Kobe wear the orange hoodie, Jones assumed. Jones had hand-selected the sweatshirt to become the league’s signature piece, although she wavered on the choice because the W plays in the summer. Nobody would want a hoodie during the summer, she reasoned. But then again, the piece was bold and simple. She kept coming back to it. “The hoodie was a simple design that looks good on everybody and was gender-neutral,” Jones told Sports Illustrated.
In partnership with ESPN, Jones and the W sent out hundreds of orange hoodies to players in the W and the NBA, as well as influencers (and women’s sports advocates) like Gabrielle Union and Robin Roberts. The first big moment for the hoodie came in August 2019 when Las Vegas Aces star, and future WNBA MVP, A’ja Wilson wore the orange sweatshirt on the sidelines while injured. “And that’s what first started the frenzy,” Jones told SI.
But at that point, the hoodie was still just a piece of gear. A popular piece of gear, yes, but nothing more. Then three things happened, one uplifting, the next two tragic. At the end of December, in 2019, Kobe sat courtside at the Staples Center with his daughter Gianna. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles beanie and…the orange hoodie. “It was just a fan thing before he wore it,” Jones said. “But when Kobe wore it, it became a fashion statement.”
When Kobe and Gianna died, along with seven others, in a helicopter crash less than a month later, that photo of Kobe in the WNBA hoodie was used in thousands of media reports. It was one of the last photos ever taken of him with his daughter. And suddenly the hoodie came to mean so much more: it became a symbol of supporting women, investing in women, and honoring the connection that Kobe had with his daughter, as well as with the women’s game.
Six weeks after the devastating helicopter crash, the world was hit with the COVID pandemic. The NBA season was paused. As summer approached, both the NBA and the WNBA planned to play their seasons in single locations that eventually came to be known as “the bubble” and “the wubble” — that is, the women’s bubble. Jones, with the help of ESPN, sent out 150 hoodies to men’s players, as well as influencers, in advance of the WNBA season. On the opening day of the season, the #orangehoodie was everywhere: on LeBron James, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard, rapper Lil Wayne, and tennis star Naomi Osaka.
Over the next year, the hoodie became the bestselling item on the entire Fanatics website, as well as the bestselling WNBA item in history. “It’s a lie that the W doesn’t sell,” Jones told Yahoo! Sports. “The W does sell.”
The scene is both universal and iconic: a father sitting courtside, coaching his young daughter in the game they both love. This interaction has played out a million times over the years, between dads and daughters across the world. But what made this so singular was the dad: eighteen-time NBA all-star, and Los Angeles Lakers legend, Kobe Bryant; and the daughter, Gianna Bryant, with her sights set on someday playing for Geno Auriemma at the University of Connecticut, then the WNBA afterward.
Kobe and Gianna were a duo: he, one of the coaches for her AAU team at the Mamba Sports Academy that he helped launch in 2018; she, the heir apparent to his legacy. He was on the sidelines for her games, and they were on the sidelines together to watch the best in the world — the WNBA. “There’s no better way to learn than to watch the pros do it,” Kobe told the New York Times after bringing Gianna and her Mamba AAU teammates to watch the Los Angeles Sparks play the
Las Vegas Aces. “The WNBA is a beautiful game to watch.”
One of the last images taken of them together was courtside at an NBA game, Kobe wearing the bright orange WNBA hoodie. He was pointing out game strategy to his daughter, his arm draped over her shoulder. A month later, the two of them, along with seven others, would die in a helicopter crash while traveling to a game at the Mamba Academy.
On that day, so much was lost.
And one piece of the grief was for a future that would now never exist: Gianna Bryant, growing with the game, excelling at different levels. Alongside her, of course, would have been Kobe, shining a spotlight on the women’s game. In fact, they were already doing it. In 2019, Kobe stopped by the W headquarters in New York to meet with the league office and discuss the WNBA’s future. In the offseason, upandcoming high school and college stars like Hailey Van Lith would work out at Mamba Academy. And when the Oregon Ducks came to Los Angeles to play Southern California, Kobe and Gigi were sitting courtside to see Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu, the best college player in the country. From that day forward, Ionescu considered Kobe a mentor. “We got to become really, really close friends,” Ionescu said on the Sports Uncovered podcast. “We talked a few times a week. We talked really about everything whether it was basketball, his family, my basketball. Really the conversation took us wherever we really wanted.”
After their deaths, former Cal player Talia Caldwell wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. Here are her final two paragraphs of that piece:
What Kobe did, consciously or not, was give male sports fans a curiosity about why an all-time N.B.A. great found so much joy and pleasure in women’s basketball. He spent time with W.N.B.A. players, who were his peers. He casually mentioned their names in interviews, tweets and Instagram posts, prompting people to learn about the worldclass athletes that they were late to discover.
Kobe Bryant, the scorer, the ultimate alpha, was ridiculed his entire career for not passing the ball enough. I hope he’s remembered for passing the ball to women.