In a rare second in skilled sports activities, the WNBA All-Star Napheesa Collier used a post-game press convention to air her grievances about the best way the league usually, and Commissioner Cathy Engelbert particularly, does enterprise.
The Minnesota Lynx ahead, who’s a five-time All-Star and vp of the Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Gamers Affiliation, used Tuesday’s press convention to argue that the WNBA is being mismanaged. “We have now the most effective gamers on this planet. We have now the most effective followers on this planet,” Collier mentioned. “However proper now now we have the worst management on this planet.”
The Lynx ended their season after a game-four loss to the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday. Collier injured her ankle throughout Sport 3 after she fell on the courtroom, with the Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas then stealing the ball from her. When a foul wasn’t known as on the play, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve charged the courtroom to problem a referee and was ejected from the sport. Reeve was reportedly fined $15,000 and suspended for Sport 4 after heated feedback in a information convention by which she known as for league-wide officiating adjustments.
Collier devoted lots of her remarks to inconsistent officiating, which she known as an act of “self-sabotage” from the league, feedback notably salient as gamers stay gridlocked with the league workplace over a brand new Collective Bargaining Settlement.
Throughout a interval of blockbuster progress for the WNBA—when participant pay and the league’s sustainability is prime of mine—Collier argues negligent administration isn’t solely adversely impacting the wellbeing of gamers by way of their compensation, however the high quality of the product followers are seeing, impeding the game from successfully rising. She even introduced up the younger new superstars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and mentioned the league is blowing its alternative to capitalize on their emergence.
“The actual risk to our league isn’t cash. It isn’t scores and even missed calls and even bodily play,” Collier mentioned. “It’s the shortage of accountability from the league workplace. Since I’ve been within the league, you’ve heard the fixed considerations about officiating, and it has now reached ranges of inconsistency that plague our sport and undermine the integrity by which it operates.”
Collier’s grievances
For instance, Collier introduced up her reminiscence of a non-public dialog with Engelbert, claiming the commissioner had rebuffed her considerations round participant pay. The Lynx participant mentioned she struck up conversations with the commissioner at an Unmatched league match in February, asking about why younger league stars like Bueckers, Angel Reese, and Caitlin Clark have been making so little cash regardless of driving league progress, and Engelbert responded, “Caitlin must be grateful she makes 16 million ({dollars}) off the courtroom, as a result of with out the platform that the WNBA provides her, she wouldn’t make something.”
“We’re the gamers, so we really feel like we simply ought to get what we deserve and what the folks earlier than us have paved the best way for us to get, what the following era deserves,” Bueckers informed Fortune final month. “As the sport continues to develop, and the W continues to capitalize off of our progress … we really feel like we should always simply get a bit of that pie.”
Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon and Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White have been additionally fined for making public feedback criticizing the officers in remarks defending Reeve. Collier mentioned on Tuesday that she disapproved of how the league doled out these fines.
“Our management’s skill to [be] held accountable is to suppress everybody’s voices by handing out fines,” she mentioned. “I’m not involved a couple of high quality. I’m involved about the way forward for our sport.”
Ongoing disputes over pay
WNBA gamers are in ongoing negotiations with the league over a Collective Bargaining Settlement. The present settlement expires on Oct. 31. Past wanting to extend pay for gamers—the beginning wage for a WNBA rookie barely breaks $75,000, whereas the utmost is round $25,000—the athletes have additionally expressed want for revenue-sharing.
Gamers have argued they weren’t being compensated appropriately because the league balloons in worth and recognition. In June, Sportico estimated a WNBA group was value a median of $269 million, a 180% enhance from 2024. The 13 groups are collectively value an estimated $3.5 billion. The league introduced on Tuesday an 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal going into impact subsequent season.
Engelbert mentioned in an announcement launched Tuesday she has “the utmost respect for Napheesa Collier and for all of the gamers within the WNBA.”
“Collectively now we have all labored tirelessly to rework this league. My focus stays on making certain a vivid future for the gamers and the WNBA, together with collaborating on how we proceed to raise the sport.”
“I’m disheartened by how Napheesa characterised our conversations and league management, however even when our views differ, my dedication to the gamers and to this work is not going to waver,” she concluded.
These points should not distinctive to the WNBA, as its affiliate league, the NBA, has weathered refereeing controversies and skirmishes over participant pay for years. It’s at the moment embroiled in arguably its biggest-ever monetary scandal, as Los Angeles Clippers proprietor Steve Ballmer, the previous Microsoft CEO who can also be the wealthiest proprietor within the league, was lately accused of skirting the NBA’s wage cap by paying star participant Kawhi Leonard $28 million for a “no-show job.” In one other infamous incident, former referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to jail for conspiring to repair video games in a scandal that continues to solid a shadow over the NBA’s referee integrity.
