From being a WNBA peak performer to winning the Championship title and the Finals MVP with the New York Liberty this year, Jonquel Jones has experienced a lot. And with every experience, she has grown into the baller she is today. One such incident is her contract with a $116 billion brand which saw her almost lose out on the deal until she predicted her future and then lived up to what she said.

On Saturday’s episode of The Pivot Podcast, Jones shared an anecdote that had everyone applauding her spirit and how she stuck to her words.

“I don’t know I might get in trouble for saying this. But I’m going to be 100% real with y’all, right now. So I was playing overseas I was playing in Russia at that time like my Nike contract was coming up, right? I think an Olympic year was the next year and obviously any big brand, they’re going to try to endorse Olympians because you know they about to be on the biggest stage. Everybody’s about to be watching them and at the time like Nike was kind of like ‘Yeah, we want you, but we really got to get these Olympians first.'”

Jones stated that she played in the Russian league for UMMC Ekaterinburg from 2018-22, and this incident happened before the Tokyo Summer Games.

The Liberty star was drafted in the WNBA as the sixth overall pick by the LA Sparks. However, she was later traded to the Connecticut Sun where she played averagely well in her rookie season. The next year, she pulled up her socks and won the Most Improved Player award. However, by the Tokyo Olympics, she was on the edge of losing her contract with Nike as she wasn’t selected for the Olympics squad.

“And I just remember like talking to my agent and just being like they tripping and I told him I was like ‘You tell Nike get back on the phone… with Nike and you tell them next year I’m about to win MVP. I’m about to take over the league and if they don’t re-sign me, they going to look stupid,” Jones added.

But, she did not shy away from expressing to Nike that she had the caliber to turn things around. Next year in 2021, she was the league’s MVP with 19.4 points and 11.2 rebounds per game. And thereafter, the sports athleisure mogul understood her value. From that point onwards, Nike has valued her so much that in August this year, they released her KD 17 WMNS “Dusty Cactus/Vapor Green” in collab with the brand.

“Just like that… just like… that and he went back to them and he told them verbatim. Got my Nike contract back. Next year MVP. To be honest with you and I think that was the mental shift for me like obviously there’s growing pains when you first come into the league like you’re playing against grown women who’ve been in the league multiple years,” Jones concluded before expounding that she did not like the idea of brands “playing with me for real,” and hence she took this step.

This year Jones once again won hearts as she won Finals MVP and helped her team (NY Liberty) lift the silverware. As for the endorsements in the WNBA, Jones doesn’t look to be satisfied with how things work.

Jonquel Jones is unhappy with how brands choose athletes

Despite winning the MVP in 2021, and also a Mother of Dragons performance at the Euro Basket, Jones found it difficult to get marketing deals. This somewhat affected her as she did not like that the idea of meritocracy wasn’t being followed. So in one of her tweets in 2022, she slammed companies for different treatment of athletes from the WNBA and the NBA.

“It’s all a popularity contest and politics in [women’s basketball]. In [men’s basketball] you just gottah [sic] be the best. In [women’s basketball] you gottah [sic] be the best player, best looking, most marketable, most IG followers, just to sit at the endorsement table. Thank God for [playing] overseas because my bag would’ve been fumbled,” Jones expressed.

While Giannis Antetokounmpo got a lot of deals after being the Finals MVP in 2021, as mentioned, the same couldn’t be said of Jones, who shared her anger over it. Hopefully, Jones will keep achieving milestones and who knows probably next season she might also land coveted deals as the WNBA is going towards a high.