Behind 76ers star Tyrese Maxey’s path to a signature shoe with New Balance

Since first signing with New Balance three years ago, Philadelphia 76ers star Tyrese Maxey has held firm on his belief that he didn’t take a big risk in joining a resurgent brand over competitors more established in basketball.

“New Balance took a chance on me, honestly — the other way around,” Maxey previously told Andscape after signing his first endorsement deal with the Boston-based sportswear company in 2023. Now, New Balance is taking an even bigger chance on the 25-year-old point guard, who will receive a signature shoe this year.

On Tuesday, ESPN Senior NBA Insider Shams Charania reported that Maxey and the brand agreed to a multiyear contract extension that includes his own signature line. The news was reported a day after Maxey — who ranks third in the league in scoring this season with 30 points a game — was named a starter in next month’s 2026 NBA All-Star Game for the first time in his six-year career.

“We’re so excited that Tyrese was named an All-Star starter and to get to share this moment with him,” Naveen Lokesh, New Balance’s global head of basketball marketing, said in an official statement. “He represents everything we value at New Balance: hard work, authenticity and confidence. So, working together to bring his first signature shoe to life is a natural step in celebrating who he is and where his journey is headed.”

With the announcement of his signature line, Maxey will become the 35th active NBA player with a signature shoe. He also joins Los Angeles Clippers six-time All-Star Kawhi Leonard as New Balance’s only two signature headliners in basketball, though Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg is also expected to receive a signature line from the brand eventually.

Coincidentally, this year marks the 40th anniversary of Los Angeles Lakers legend James Worthy’s 1986 New Balance “Worthy Express,” the brand’s first signature basketball shoe.

The writing on the wall of New Balance potentially delivering Maxey his own shoe first surfaced in 2024. That’s when the brand made him the headliner of its Hesi Low v2 basketball shoe, and unveiled a specially designed signature logo for him — both within several months of the point guard making his first career All-Star appearance.

The insignia interlocking Maxey’s initials appeared on his player-exclusive (PE) pairs of Hesi Low v2s, and he featured the logo on his personal website.

Following the on-court debut of his signature logo, Maxey spoke about the possibility of one day earning a signature shoe from New Balance.

“Honestly, I’m all in with New Balance. Whatever the brand’s plans are for the future, I’ll be happy with them,” Maxey told Andscape in 2024. “Obviously, every player wants their own signature shoe. But at the same time I’m extremely happy with headlining the Hesi Lows, the PEs and all the colorways. They’ve really made me feel a part of the family, and I’m thankful.”

Although Maxey, a Dallas native drafted 21st overall by the 76ers in 2020, began his career wearing Nike, he never officially signed a rookie endorsement deal with the brand.

This allowed New Balance to target Maxey early, spotting him in 2021 during the second half of his rookie season wearing NB sweatsuits and wear-testing the brand’s new performance basketball shoe.

Last summer, during an appearance in Boston at the brand’s inaugural Beantown Elite youth basketball camp, Maxey’s parents, Denyse and Tyrone Maxey, detailed the family’s decision-making process that led their son to join New Balance initially.

“We’re from the South, where Tyrese grew up primarily wearing another brand,” Denyse Maxey told Andscape. “We honestly weren’t that familiar with New Balance, because it wasn’t that popular down South, particularly for athletics and basketball.

“However, when Tyrese got drafted to a team on the East Coast, we quickly learned that there’s a different type of style there. So, when New Balance first came up on our radar, we started to look into the brand a little more — and even just how they approached Tyrese was different from other brands and partnerships.”

After New Balance began consistently pursuing Maxey early in his career, Denyse Maxey helped her son weigh the options for his first sneaker endorsement deal — reminiscent of the role Michael Jordan’s mother, Deloris, played in persuading him to consider an offer from Nike that forever changed the course of footwear history, and signature basketball shoes.

“I was really pushing Tyrese toward New Balance,” Denyse Maxey said. “Once we did our research, found out how big the brand was on the East Coast, and on who he is outside of being just an athlete, joining New Balance made sense to me. Then, I started talking to him about it around his second year in the league. He wasn’t quite sure, because he wanted to stick with the brand he grew up on. But I told him, ‘You have to start making decisions based on how a partner views you — Tyrese Maxey — and align yourself with those who have the same ideals and goals.’

“I told Tyrese, ‘Now that you’re in this position, you have to ask yourself: Does a particular brand align with who I am? What are the brand’s core values? What is it doing in the community? Does the shoe feel good on my feet?’ Because, you can work on what it looks like down the road, but does it feel good while you’re performing? So, those are the things that we looked at as a family when he started to consider transitioning. Then, everything else just kind of fell into place.”

With more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit work and community investment, Denyse Maxey is executive director of the Tyrese Maxey Foundation. Its mission: Build a legacy of leadership and meaningful influence, through faith-based values and direct engagement by the organization’s star namesake, in both the Dallas and Philadelphia communities.

One particular brand wanted to help.

“What sold me on New Balance is when I looked at the brand’s official proposal and his engagement in the community was included,” Denyse Maxey told Andscape. “New Balance had things outlined in their proposal that other brands didn’t, which showed me that they cared about who our son was.”

In January 2023, after years of courting and negotiations, New Balance officially signed Maxey to a multiyear footwear and apparel endorsement deal, adding him to the brand’s steadily growing roster of basketball players — a budding dynasty in basketball and footwear, if you will.

“From the beginning, New Balance committed to, of course, support Tyrese, but also our family and his foundation,” Tyrone Maxey told Andscape. “That’s honestly all we could ask for as parents.”

Immediately, Maxey became one of the faces of New Balance’s prolific “We Got Now” commercial, featured in the 30-second spot that since its April 2024 debut has garnered millions of views online and over several billion TV impressions. Maxey is the first player to be seen in the “New Balance Hoops” version, which was updated in February 2025. He also appears in his own seven-second edition, uploaded preemptively to the brand’s YouTube channel two weeks ago.

Before leveraging a new deal that included a signature line, Maxey received the chance to participate in the footwear industry-standard 18-to-24-month design process for his own renditions of both the Hesi Low v2 basketball silhouette and the New Balance 1906R lifestyle shoe. Inspired by his lifelong love for superheroes and comic book culture, the Tyrese Maxey x New Balance Hero Pack marked the guard’s first retail release.

“Doing the Hero Pack was my first time working on a shoe,” Maxey told Andscape in 2025. “It was interesting to see how long the design process takes. But New Balance does a really good job of creating shoes, because the quality of what they create is great. It was really fun to be a part of the process of doing a shoe for both on and off the court.

“I’m a big superhero and Marvel guy. So, I just wanted people to see a different side of me. I’m a hero for certain people on the court, but I’m also trying to be a hero off the court as a person by brightening people’s days.”

On July 31, 2025, Maxey’s special-edition Hero Pack dropped exclusively in stores at select Foot Locker locations in his hometown of Dallas and his team’s city of Philadelphia, where he and his family made an appearance to celebrate the collaboration.

“It felt surreal,” Denyse Maxey said. “We weren’t even going to go to the pop-up for the release, but Tyrese encouraged us to come. To go there and sit in that Foot Locker, where people stood in line for a shoe he designed, it was emotional. Just to know how much hard work our son put in.

“What makes us happy is not only did New Balance deliver on their promise, but the brand saw our kid as a person. They didn’t just see him as someone to sell their brand. New Balance saw him as Tyrese, and they cared and listened enough to him to put things in place that he wanted.”

For Maxey’s father, a former college basketball player at Washington State, the release day of the Hero Pack fulfilled a lifelong dream for him and his son.

“Most athletes, what they aspire to have is their own shoe,” Tyrone Maxey said. “So, now that Tyrese’s is here, it’s amazing.”

Yet, Maxey’s own shoe hadn’t arrived just yet. Behind the scenes, he began the design process for the debut model that would officially coronate his signature line, which was announced this week.

Following New Balance’s return to basketball in 2018, after more than a decade of dormancy in the sport, Leonard became the first NBA player since Worthy in the mid-1980s to receive a signature basketball shoe, with the 2020 unveiling of the New Balance Kawhi line, now on its fourth model. Behind Worthy and Leonard, Maxey becomes just the third basketball player in the company’s 120-year history to get the signature treatment.

Maxey also joins an exclusive list of global athletes who have received signature shoes and cleats from New Balance, including five-time Major League Baseball All-Star Francisco Lindor, two-time Grand Slam tennis champion Coco Gauff, and four-time MLB MVP Shohei Ohtani. Olympic hurdler/sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and international soccer star Bukayo Saka have earned signature collections, and NFL MVP Josh Allen signed a major deal with the brand last year.

“We love rewarding exceptional talent with signature shoes like we did with Kawhi Leonard, and across other sports, such as Shohei Ohtani and Coco Gauff,” Lokesh told Andscape in 2024. “We have so many rising stars in hoops that we’re excited to support for many years to come.”

Last August, ahead of his sixth NBA season, Maxey doubled down on his commitment to New Balance and on his gratitude for the chance the brand took on him.

“You won’t see me in anything but New Balance — ever. I’m so pro-New Balance, it’s ridiculous,” Maxey told Andscape. “New Balance has done so much for me and really blessed me with an opportunity of a lifetime. They’ll have all my support, and whatever I can do to continue to help sell the brand’s dream, I’ll do.”

Soon, Maxey will expand New Balance Hoops’ vision by releasing his own signature shoe.

The post Behind 76ers star Tyrese Maxey’s path to a signature shoe with New Balance appeared first on Andscape.