The smartest turn in Collier\u2019s speech was to invoke the names of Clark, Reese, and Bueckers\u2014three players with disparate and sometimes misaligned fan bases\u2014pitting Engelbert against not only the players but the world. Her comments about Clark got the most attention, as they were surely designed to. Shortly after Collier spoke out, Engelbert said in a statement that she was \u201cdisheartened\u201d by Collier\u2019s characterization of their conversation, though she didn\u2019t deny anything specific. Then, in a press conference before the start of the W.N.B.A. Finals on Friday, Engelbert pushed back against Collier\u2019s description of her comments about Clark needing to be \u201cgrateful.\u201d \u201cObviously, I did not make those comments,\u201d Engelbert said.<\/p>\n
Except it wasn\u2019t obvious. That, after all, is the way many people in leadership positions in sports\u2014and especially in the N.B.A., which owns a substantial portion of the W.N.B.A.\u2014talk about women\u2019s professional leagues for years, justifying low salaries and poor playing conditions. It sounded plausible because it was plausible. And Clark\u2019s fans, who have often noted the exceptionally high level of physicality directed at Clark and who\u2019ve been aghast at the league office\u2019s reluctance to single out her unique star power, had good reasons to believe that the league was self-sabotaging. After Collier\u2019s comments, Clark was one of the many players who backed her up. \u201cI have great respect for Phee,\u201d Clark said, of Collier, \u201cand I think she made a lot of very valid points.\u201d Clark pointed out that the introduction of name, image, and likeness (N.I.L.) rights<\/a> in college sports has made it possible for players to cultivate huge followings that they can then carry over into the W.N.B.A.\u2014not the other way around.<\/p>\n Collier said that league leadership, in an effort to avoid accountability, has tried to \u201csuppress everyone\u2019s voices by handing out fines.\u201d She continued, \u201cI\u2019m not concerned about a fine. I\u2019m concerned about the future of our sport.\u201d That\u2019s when it became clear that Collier wasn\u2019t lighting a match. The match had already been lit; smoke was going up. She was sounding the alarm before it was too late, and showing herself to be the kind of person who could lead the way out.<\/p>\n Collier, as it happens, is not just a perennial M.V.P. candidate; she is a vice-president of the players\u2019 association\u2014and a co-founder of Unrivaled, a three-on-three basketball league that competes during the W.N.B.A.\u2019s off-season. (Her husband is the current president.) In 2026, roughly a third of W.N.B.A. players will compete in it. Unrivaled was not meant to challenge the W.N.B.A.\u2019s status as the world\u2019s premier basketball league; it sometimes had the feel of an exhibition, despite being somewhat successful. (The glitziest stretch last season was a one-on-one tournament, which Collier won.) But it does offer more money: this year, Unrivaled paid players an average salary of two hundred and twenty thousand dollars\u2014close to the top salaries in the W.N.B.A. It also offers players equity, along with better amenities, perks, and an aggressive television deal.<\/p>\n It also gave players a place to come together and to compare notes. The W.N.B.A. is not like other leagues, and one of the things that sets it apart is the strong sense of unity among its players. That is partly a result of the nature of women\u2019s sports, in which playing professionally has been, at times, a kind of inherent activism\u2014particularly in the W.N.B.A., where a majority of players are Black and many players openly identify as L.G.B.T.Q. It was hardly a surprise when players and coaches lined up to offer Collier their support.<\/p>\n By conventional metrics\u2014arguably the ones by which a commissioner is judged\u2014the W.N.B.A. has never been in a better place. Even as Collier spoke, the league office was circulating news of yet another television-rights deal, this one with Versant, to present games on USA Network. More games will air on a host of networks as part of a $2.2-billion contract. Ratings are up, even though Clark, who is the sport\u2019s biggest draw in terms of viewership, only played in thirteen games all year. Game attendance broke records this season. Engelbert, who had been the first female C.E.O. of Deloitte, has done the job that the N.B.A. had hired her to do in 2019. Team valuations, many of which had been eight figures last year, are now pushing half a billion dollars, and expansion fees are pegged at two hundred and fifty million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The smartest turn in Collier\u2019s speech was to invoke the names of Clark, Reese, and Bueckers\u2014three players with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":351500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[27440,1339,14416,62,67,132,68,172063,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-351499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-athletes","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-salaries","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-w-n-b-a","16":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}