The WNBA is coming off its memorable 25th anniversary season. Now, the league will get a different spotlight shone on it with this year’s historic SI Swimsuit issue.
The 2022 version will feature five star players from the WNBA, with the group featuring established stars and up-and-coming younger players alike. The quintet includes Storm guard Sue Bird, free agent guard Te’a Cooper, Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike, Liberty guard DiDi Richards and Storm forward Breanna Stewart.
Laretta Houston
The selection of these five players is aimed at representing the league’s diversity and culture of acceptance, aspects that Bird cited when describing what it meant to participate in this year’s shoot.
“This is who we are; this is the makeup of our league,” Bird said. “We represent a variety of things: of course women, women of color, members of the LGBTQIA2+ community and much more. . . . The [Swimsuit] issue for so many years has been iconic and has represented a lot for women. Now you are seeing an evolution in what that can mean and what that can look like, and I think the WNBA players being a part of that is what makes it special. There is no better group of women to showcase that evolution.”
All five of this year’s featured athletes have accomplished much off of the court: Bird is a co-founder of a digital production platform; Cooper has worked in modeling and fashion; Ogwumike is the president of the WNBA players union; Richards is working towards a career in modeling, fashion and design; and Stewart has been at the forefront of the WNBA’s social justice initiatives.
While the five WNBA players took different paths to reach this point, they’ve made history with their inclusion in the 2022 issue. And the fact that they did so together brings an added layer of pride to the entire experience.
“[The SI Swimsuit cover] says ‘sports’ but they always looked like models, so I would have never thought one day I would be one,” Cooper said. “It was very empowering to be a part of this because of the people I did it with. Everybody’s story was different and just spending time with them, us all being in the WNBA as professionals was overwhelming.”
"We couldn't be more thrilled to have such a badass group of women come together for this specific issue," says SI Swimsuit editor in chief MJ Day. The 2022 Swimsuit Issue will be available at newsstands on May 19 and launches at swimsuit.si.com on May 16.
