The 18-year-old becomes just the second collegiate athlete to sign with Jordan Brand as LSU makes its latest run through March.
As the defending national champions, LSU is led by some familiar faces in Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson. But as the Tigers look to get back to the Final Four and pull off a repeat, they’ll need freshman phenom Mikaylah Williams, who’s added to the team’s firepower all season long.
The 6-0 versatile forward emphatically announced her arrival early in her collegiate career by dropping 42 points in just her fourth game at LSU. Now, Williams is leaving her mark in the NIL space by becoming one of the youngest women’s players in all of college basketball to land a coveted shoe deal.
Last week, Williams signed a multi-year sneaker deal with Jordan Brand, making her a mainstay in marketing campaigns and future footwear launches for the iconic namesake brand of Michael Jordan.
“Coming from a small town, where there’s not really a lot of recognition as big as this, I’m just blessed and excited to show a pathway for the girls that are coming up behind me,” Williams told Boardroom.
It’s a pathway that’s led the top-touted player from Bossier, La., through the ranks of high school basketball, where she starred in the Jordan Brand Classic before making her way to campus in Baton Rouge, less than four hours away from her hometown.
As the advent of NIL came into play during her high school career, Williams and her family began to brainstorm around things like taglines and marketing concepts. It was “12 Island” that they rallied around, which Williams now has tattooed on her shooting wrist, along with 12 hash marks.
The tagline and graphic have even made their way to a collection of merch available for purchase. “Don’t get left on 12 Island!” reads an array of online mixtape titles of her mixing defenders on the wing for yet another bucket.
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“The biggest thing about my game is versatility. I’m able to do it all,” said Williams. “I can shoot from the 3 and the midrange, I can get to the basket, play defense and rebound. Versatility is the biggest thing of my game.”
Jordan Brand continues to expand its women’s category across the globe, with the brand soon inching towards the $7 billion annual revenue mark. Part of that growth plan includes a key focus on highlighting its three current NIL athletes, now including Williams, UCLA guard Kiki Rice and New Jersey high school star Kiyomi McMiller.
While several companies had reached out to pursue signing Williams well ahead of her potential path to the WNBA, being part of Jordan Brand’s select group most appealed to Williams and her team.
“We’re really happy that they saw a fit for Mikaylah to be one of the people that is going to lead the brand into the next generation,” said her agent Chris Gaston, CEO of Family First Sports Firm. “We want her to be the face of the brand one day and be a person that can have a signature shoe. We like that Jordan doesn’t go after any and everybody.”
To date, the brand has added just two rising players to the creative NIL shoe deal format since NIL rules went into effect in 2021.
They first landed Rice ahead of her freshman season at Jordan-sponsored UCLA, and then signed McMiller and her oft-highlighted handles and creativity ahead of her senior season at Life Academy High School.
Williams represents yet another new step for the company as she continues her journey at LSU.
“She will be the first player that’s not at a Jordan school, men’s or women’s, to be getting a deal with Jordan at the college level,” Gaston added.
It’s a distinction that Williams doesn’t take lightly, as the NIL era still remains a new frontier for players as young as herself, who now balance basketball, school, and the marketing industry.
“I get to be the engineer for the people coming up behind me,” Williams says of the opportunity. “So everyone can see what to do and what not to do.”
Early on, Williams mentions liking Jayson Tatum’s signature series most on-court and lists the Air Jordan 11 as her all-time favorite Jumpman sneaker off the court.
“1s are always the classics, too,” she says of her everyday rotation.
Although Jordan Brand has yet to release a woman’s signature shoe during its 27-year history, Williams notes that the recent resurgence of female-led signature shoes in just the last two W seasons points to a shift in the marketing landscape and adds hope for the future.
“Being a little girl, you can know that today, the women’s game is growing,” she beamed. “Women didn’t have [signature] shoes, and now, the women’s game is growing. We have signature shoes, and the NBA players are wearing them and pushing the shoes too. It’s a good feeling, just knowing that I get to come up behind that and help expand the women’s game.”
With her career at the powerhouse platform of LSU just beginning, now in tandem with the marketing muscle of Jordan Brand, Williams finds herself placed in a different tier of elite athletes at the college level. Just 15 women in all of college basketball have a NIL shoe deal this season, with brands narrowing in on the most dynamic players as they look to highlight their stories and appeal to the next generation of players to come.
“I’m just excited to finally be able to showcase my abilities and what I stand for on a bigger stage,” framed Williams. “I kept my head down, and I stayed humble, and all of these opportunities are starting to come.”
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