A year and a half ago, Lailaa Parker began the design process of creating a special edition adidas colorway to honor her WNBA star mom for Mother’s Day.
When Chicago Sky star Candace Parker made her WNBA season debut for a 15th (and perhaps final) time this weekend, she was laced in a special edition pair of adidas sneakers, designed by her 12-year-old daughter Lailaa.
“These are the moments I live for as a mother,” she captioned on Instagram.
Over a year ago, Lailaa and adidas Basketball designers began working in anticipation of the brand’s newest basketball model reveal. Parker was set to headline the upcoming Exhibit B sneaker, a wavy update to the Exhibit A “ACE” model that she wore throughout the 2021 season during the championship run in her first season in Chicago.
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Spec’d and styled with hues from her Tennessee Vols days, the shoe also features red along the outsole as a nod to Naperville High School.
Along both insoles and the outsole reads a familiar motivating phrase for Candace: “Right Foot, Left Foot, Breathe, Repeat.”
“That’s something that I have [tattooed] on my arm, and something Pat [Summitt] used to always tell me,” Parker told Boardroom last fall. “[She’d say,] ‘when things get hard, just put one foot in front of the other, breathe and repeat.’”
On the inner collar of the left shoe reads Parker’s oft-used “For Pat” text in cursive, while the right shoe includes an updated message from Lailaa, “For Mom.”
The heel tab of each shoe reads “Reason.”
“She is my reason and my purpose and having her with me on the court last night in this spirit meant the world to me,” Parker said after her 21-point, six-rebound and six-assist debut. “Each detail is a memory shared between us and I could not be prouder to have debuted these at [Friday’s] game.”
As Parker mentioned to Boardroom in the past, her crossover into broadcasting with Turner Sports was partly inspired by her interest in creating more stability for her daughter’s teenage years than she could provide by playing overseas in the offseason.
“I really wanted to be stateside,” Parker said. “My daughter is getting older, and she needs to be in school and in one place. It just ended up working out perfectly.”
Last fall, Parker launched her own podcast “Moments with Candace Parker,” centered on her “favorite and most difficult job,” parenting. Parker and special guests share stories about their children and lend their own parenting advice.
“My daughter humbles me on the daily,” Parker said, laughing. “She will ask me when I got drafted, and then she’ll be like, ‘You did? You got drafted No. 1?’ like surprised. There’s so many times that Lailaa humbles me.”
All season long, she’ll be able to celebrate their connection on the court, with her new Lailaa-led Exhibit B sneakers continuing to tell their story.
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