The high school hoops star and projected top NBA Draft pick is teaming up with Shaquille O’Neal & Allen Iverson to lead the next generation of Reebok Basketball.
As Reebok continues to lay the foundation of its aggressive 2025 re-launch into the performance basketball space, the company has signed top 2026 NBA Draft prospect Nate Ament to a long-term NIL and NBA shoe deal.
“I’m so excited to welcome Nate into the Reebok family,” said Shaquille O’Neal, President of Reebok Basketball. “He’s a great kid who comes from an amazing family, and he’s got superstar potential on the court.”
Ament, a 6-9 do-it-all forward from Manassas, Virginia, is just now beginning his senior season at Highland High School. The 17-year-old is a five-star recruit in the Class of 2025, ranked fourth on ESPN’s esteemed Top 100 list, and a projected third overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Some have even wondered if he can be the eventual No. 1 pick upon entering the league.
He recently won MVP at the SLAM Summer Classic and was a standout at the ELITE 24 game, with his performance throughout the summer slate quickly drawing the interest of sneaker brands around the industry.
Last fall, Reebok named its two original signature shoe icons to leadership positions at the company, with Shaq named President and Allen Iverson serving as the Vice President of Reebok Basketball. Each Hall of Famer has taken on a key role in identifying and signing the next generation of Reebok’s key athlete partners.
“Reebok has everything I need as a young basketball player to take my game to the next level,” said Ament. “Shaq and A.I. – all my dreams have been lived out by these legends, so to have them as a resource is exciting.”
Since NIL laws went into effect for collegiate athletes in 2021, the next phase of the marketing industry’s modern era became the ability for high school athletes to also enter into official brand partnerships well before their pro careers even begin.
Ament is viewed around league circles as a future franchise player whose dual American and Rwandan background, with family ties also to Italy, gives him a potential global profile as an endorser. The deal, negotiated by LIFT Sports Management, is set to make Ament one of the highest-earning NIL shoe endorsers in basketball, landed two seasons before he is expected to declare for the 2026 NBA Draft down the road.
“It’s perfect timing,” said agent Derek Malloy of LIFT. “The strides that Nate is making in his career at his age are blessings you simply cannot deny. Reebok will be making their mark again, and we are blessed enough to have them look to build around Nate.”
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The next phase of Ament’s basketball journey will entail selecting a college. As he has received more than 40 official offers from programs, he is continuing to take official visits and remains undecided.
Across the NCAA, Reebok does not currently have any school-wide footwear and apparel deals, but they did make one of the first landmark signings of the NIL era by signing Angel Reese to an official partnership while she was still at LSU.
That signing has proved to be not only a groundbreaking deal within the space but also now a pillar of the brand’s potential in the basketball category going forward. Reese has emerged as the most-followed WNBA player across social media and was selected for the All-Star Game during her standout rookie season.
Reese debuted the brand’s upcoming Engine A sneaker for 2025 in late August. In Ament, Reebok is placing yet another early bet on a future star through the recent NIL ability to sign athletes before their NBA and WNBA careers even begin.
In addition to headlining the brand’s first new high-performance basketball model in over a decade, Ament will also receive his own batch of more than a handful of Player Exclusive colorways of the Engine A model.
“That’s crazy. It’s insane,” beamed Ament. “Back to when I first started playing and I was wearing beat-up KDs, I thought that was always going to be the case, that I’d have some beat-up shoes on. Thinking about having your own PE is special. It’s everything that a young basketball player wants to have.”
Reebok plans to launch one of his themed PE colorways at retail, a rare distinction for a non-pro, which will become one of the first such designations for a high school NIL athlete in footwear history.
“Having my own PE is a dream come true, but it’s a signifier that I gotta keep working hard if I want to stay where I am, keep growing, come out with more PEs or my own [signature] shoe,” he said.
With a product pipeline already being designed and developed and future brand campaigns, content plans, and launches to map out, Ament’s partnership with Reebok has already hit the ground running.
“The Reebok team did an incredible job of walking us through their vision for where the brand is headed with Nate and around Nate specifically,” continued Malloy. “He’s a star in the making, and we’re all excited for Nate to be a part of such a great brand as they both grow together.”
In landing the deal before his 18th birthday this December, the five-star prospect will continue his basketball journey with goals of soon reaching the NBA, with a key brand partner in Reebok already locked in to build alongside.
“I’m just amped to see what we can do together with all the possibilities ahead,” framed Ament.
“We know he’s going to do big things, and we’ll be right there with him,” O’Neal added.
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