Ramona ShelburneCloseRamona ShelburneESPN Senior WriterSenior writer for ESPN.comSpent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily NewsFollow on XKendra AndrewsOct 6, 2025, 08:00 AM ET
play0:32Caitlin Clark: Points made in Collier’s statement were ‘very valid’Caitlin Clark details why Napheesa Collier’s statement highlights a key moment in WNBA history and the league must capitalize on it.
play4:24WNBA commissioner on Collier’s comments and officiatingWNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert discusses Napheesa Collier’s comments and protocols surrounding officiating.
Caitlin Clark: Points made in Collier’s statement were ‘very valid’Caitlin Clark details why Napheesa Collier’s statement highlights a key moment in WNBA history and the league must capitalize on it.
Caitlin Clark details why Napheesa Collier’s statement highlights a key moment in WNBA history and the league must capitalize on it.
WNBA commissioner on Collier’s comments and officiatingWNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert discusses Napheesa Collier’s comments and protocols surrounding officiating.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert discusses Napheesa Collier’s comments and protocols surrounding officiating.
It was late in the evening on Friday, Sept. 26, only a few hours after the Minnesota Lynx dropped Game 3 of their semifinal series against the Phoenix Mercury. With 26 seconds left in the game and the Lynx down four, Collier had crashed to the floor after a collision with the Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas.
Collier would do this alone: There was no communication or coordination with the players’ association, for which Collier served as vice president, sources say.
The general message she planned to deliver had been on her mind for months, sources say, ever since a meeting seven months ago in Miami.
Back in February, sources say Engelbert called a meeting with Collier and her husband, Alex Bazzell, the president of Unrivaled, a startup 3-on-3 league founded alongside Collier that some in the WNBA increasingly believe is becoming competition to the league itself.
“Her response was, ‘[Clark] should be grateful she makes $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything.’ And in that same conversation, she told me, ‘Players should be on their knees, thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.'”
Then, before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, in her first public appearance since Collier’s statement, Engelbert began her news conference with a statement of her own.
The dueling statements between two of the league’s most powerful people have overshadowed the Finals at perhaps the most important time in WNBA history. On one side is Engelbert, who has been in charge of the league for a period of unprecedented growth but has lost the trust of players. On the other is Collier, a superstar player deeply involved in CBA negotiations and in a rival league that has become vital to players’ offseason income.
With the league’s CBA set to expire at the end of the month, they are locked in a battle for public opinion, power and money.
“This is an inflection point for the league,” one longtime senior executive told ESPN. “There is a root cause, and it’s lack of transparency, lack of trust in the league and the relationship between the players and the league.
“You can get transparency overnight. But trust is not built overnight. And [Engelbert has] lost it. She can’t get it back overnight.”
Caitlin Clark: Points made in Collier’s statement were ‘very valid’
WHAT THIS BREAKDOWN — and the near universal outpouring of support for Collier from WNBA players — means for Engelbert’s tenure remains very much to be seen.
Engelbert made clear her resolve to maintain her position Friday, an expectation mirrored among the more than a dozen players, coaches, executives, owners and league officials interviewed by ESPN as well.
“She’s already unpopular,” one league source who is involved in CBA talks said. “So let her be the bad guy in CBA negotiations, then replace her.”
Multiple league sources wondered what would happen if the players who have loudly supported Collier this week, simply refused to negotiate with the league on a new CBA until Engelbert resigned or was replaced.
“The most important people in this entire ecosystem are the players,” one executive said. “Lock them out if you want to, but all you’re going to do is ensure that Unrivaled becomes the big person on campus as opposed to the W.”
It’s fair to wonder, of course, whether Collier’s comments also serve a larger aim — to promote Unrivaled, the league she co-founded with her husband and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, and push the WNBA publicly in CBA talks.
“It’s a total conflict of interest,” another league source said. “[Collier’s] husband runs the league that’s in competition with the W, and she has equity in it.”
Collier and Stewart are also both on the executive committee of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, which is negotiating with the league on the new CBA.
The executive committee is elected by other players in the league, meaning they are the ones who must decide whether there is indeed a substantive conflict of interest.
Said Clark: “First of all, I have great respect for [Collier.] I think she made a lot of very valid points. … This is straight-up the most important moment in this league’s history. This league’s been around for 25-plus years, and this is a moment we have to capitalize on.”
“I’m just tired of our league,” Cunningham continued. “They need to step up and be better. Our leadership from top to bottom needs to be held accountable.”
Unrivaled, which played its first season in January in Miami, has become an important supplement to players’ salaries, especially since overseas money and opportunities have decreased in recent years.
Collier and Stewart initially offered the WNBA a small equity share in Unrivaled to show alignment, multiple sources say, but ultimately such a partnership could have violated league rules, and they were turned down.
The WNBA was focused on its own revenue growth, and it was still unclear whether Unrivaled would be viable.
WNBA commissioner on Collier’s comments and officiating
At the heart of this fall’s CBA negotiations — and the players’ simmering frustration with the league — is why more of those financial gains haven’t yet trickled down to the players.
This week, sports economist and professor David Berri wrote in The New York Times that if WNBA players received a similar percentage of “basketball-related income” as NBA players, the top stars should be making more than $3 million a year. Instead, they earn less than 10% of that.
“That’s where the trust started to break down,” one league source said. “You want to call ’em greedy and unreasonable, but you won’t give them the data.”
Engelbert took the job in the middle of CBA negotiations in 2019. She and interim president Mark Tatum, who is Adam Silver’s top deputy in the NBA, quickly finished what was then hailed as a transformative CBA because of the added benefits for players.
At the time, Engelbert was hailed for her business acumen after 33 years at Deloitte, a top financial services and consulting firm. An accountant by trade, she had steadily risen through the ranks to become the first woman to be CEO of the firm in 2014. During Engelbert’s tenure as CEO, Deloitte’s revenue increased 30% to over $20 billion, according to a 2018 Time Magazine profile.
When Silver hired her — according to The Wall Street Journal she was not renominated for a second four-year term as CEO of Deloitte — he notably gave her the title of commissioner. The league’s previous leaders had all been given the title of president. Engelbert said Friday that it was Silver’s idea to empower her with the title.
“Adam has been a great supporter of mine,” she said. “He was the one who had the idea to have a commissioner reporting to the board of governors, the owners.”
Speaking in 2019 on why the title was changed from president to commissioner, Silver said, “With Cathy’s hiring, we wanted to signal to the broadest possible audience that the WNBA is a major league and that she has the same status as the heads of other U.S.-based sports leagues.”
Earlier in the year, New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu told the New York Post she has a better relationship with Silver than she does with Engelbert.
HOW THE MEETING between Engelbert and Collier was arranged, and then canceled, mirrors their larger relationship, and Engelbert’s difficulty in building relationships with players in general — an issue she acknowledged in her news conference before Game 1.
In the hours after Collier’s injury, Bazzell and Collier’s agent each made calls to Engelbert, and the messages they left went unreturned, multiple sources say.
The only person who did connect with anyone close to Collier was Bethany Donaphin, the head of operations for the WNBA, who reached Collier’s agent, sources said.
After Collier’s exit interview, Engelbert issued a statement later that day, saying, in part, “I am disheartened by how Napheesa characterized our conversations and league leadership, but even when our perspectives differ, my commitment to the players and to this work will not waver.”
Two days later, on Thursday, sources said that Donaphin left a conciliatory voicemail for Collier, asking if she’d be willing to meet with Engelbert to talk through the situation. Collier said that she would.
Then Engelbert texted Collier directly Thursday evening, sources said, to arrange the meeting Engelbert relayed publicly on Friday.
Whatever chance, however slim, the two had to mend fences during an in-person meeting was over, one source close to Collier said.
And so it is that amid the calls for her resignation and perhaps the most intense round of CBA negotiations in league history, this is Engelbert’s situation to solve. And, at least for now, hers alone.
THERE IS VERY little dispute how much the WNBA has grown during Engelbert’s tenure. According to a report from Deloitte earlier this year, revenues are projected to top $1 billion this year. ESPN/ABC WNBA ratings hit an all-time high this season, averaging 1.3 million viewers across 25 games. Merchandise sales are up 500% this year, according to the Sports Business Journal. The league invested $50 million in charter flights — a key initiative for players — but owners also just got $250 million in expansion fees from three cities, with half a dozen more lined up to pay even more if there are future expansions.