Unrivaled League

Some engagements start as a single project and turn into something else. This one started with jerseys.

In 2024, Wheelhouse was brought on to design team kits for Unrivaled's inaugural season, a new professional women's basketball league backed by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Carmelo Anthony, Alex Morgan, and Michael Phelps. I ran that first project, and it went well enough to become a retainer from January through August 2025.

What followed was a different kind of work. A league in its first season does not have a tidy annual calendar. It has games, and games generate needs that arrive with the season already underway. Over eight months the retainer covered the brand and logo system for their marquee 1-on-1 tournament, court signage, social templates, and a full refinement of the league guidelines and all six team identities.

The tournament was the clearest test. It ran February 10 to 14 in Miami with a $200,000 purse and Sprite as presenting partner, so the identity had to be finished, approved, and applied across broadcast, court, and social well before tip-off. Nobody moves a nationally sponsored tournament because a design review ran long. Working backward from that date and holding both teams to the roadmap was most of the job.

Underneath it sat a volume problem: six team identities with home, away, and practice references, plus league marks, tournament branding, and signage, all in active use at once. I made asset management its own workstream, with versioning that held when guidelines shifted mid-season and packages their team could use without asking us where something lived.

Unrivaled was building a league while running it. Being a steady partner on the design side took one thing off their plate, and that was the real deliverable underneath every asset. It also changed how I scope retainers, and how carefully I separate a project timeline from an operating rhythm.