Whatever beef Brown has with the shoe giant, snatching a piece of its business won’t be easy: It owns about 80% of the roughly $5.5 billion global basketball shoe market. It makes uniforms for every team in the league, and during the 2022-23 season, the most recent one for which information is available, 65% of players wore Nike sneakers.

Jaylen Brown’s scoring is up from 23 to 25.6 points per game this season, but the real story lies in the details—his growth in free-throw generation, increased self-creation, and the challenges affecting his scoring efficiency.