If it was up to Napheesa Collier, I’m sure she would have much rather spent Tuesday afternoon healthy and preparing with her Minnesota Lynx teammates to play the Phoenix Mercury in Game 5 of the WNBA semifinals. But the Lynx’s season abruptly came to an end with a loss in Game 4 on Sunday afternoon as Collier sat on the sidelines in a walking boot and head coach Cheryl Reeve served a one-game suspension in a hotel room nearby, both consequences of a dramatic end to Game 3.
So, instead of doing a pre-game shootaround and reviewing a game plan with coaches on Tuesday, Collier spent the afternoon making a very different strategic move — escalating the CBA fight between the WNBA and WNBA Players Association from a simmering conflict to active warfare.
“We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world. But right now we have the worst leadership in the world,” Collier said in a lengthy pre-written statement she delivered at the beginning of her exit interview with the media.
The entire masterful statement is worth a read and listen. She did what I expected her to do — back up Reeve’s suspension-fueling comments about poor officiating, increased physicality and a need for leadership change.
But then she did the unexpected: Describe her interactions behind the scenes with WNBA league officials, particularly commissioner Cathy Engelbert.
She characterized Engelbert as dismissive, impersonable, condescending and callous, saying that in talks in February, Englebert told Collier that Caitlin Clark “should be grateful she makes $60 million off the court because without the platform the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything” and that “players should be on their knees thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.” (Engelbert said in a statement she was “disheartened by how Napheesa characterized our conversations and league leadership.”)
Engelbert has been raked over the coals by players, fans and media members over the past 72 hours, and deservedly so. But there is another entity that should be receiving at least as much — if not more — criticism as Engelbert: The NBA.
Because Engelbert is not truly the one in charge; the NBA is.
The WNBA has a unique ownership structure. For most of its existence, the NBA has owned 50% of the league. But in 2021, the WNBA raised $75 million of capital at a $400 million valuation, which gave that group of investors an equity share of 16% — half from the NBA’s stake and the other half from the WNBA’s stake, diluting both sides down to 42% each.
However, it’s not right to say that the NBA only owns 42% of the WNBA, because multiple NBA owners were part of the equity capital raise, and many own WNBA teams as well; today, six of the 13 WNBA teams are owned by their NBA counterparts, and four of the five expansion teams coming in the next four years are run by NBA owners, too. NBA owners collectively own about 60% of the WNBA.
That means Engelbert’s boss is NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the rest of the NBA owners. She has to get their buy-in for anything she does. That’s probably why Collier’s characterization of Engelbert and WNBA leadership sounded so familiar. It’s the same lines WNBA fans and players have been hearing coming from the NBA since the WNBA’s inception.
2025 WNBA Finals predictions: Expert picks for Aces vs. Mercury as Phoenix tries to pull upset
Jack Maloney
For decades, Silver has complained publicly about the WNBA’s lack of popularity and profitability, all while doing very little to invest in its success. Usually, people who own businesses talk them up publicly and laud their successes; instead the NBA has empowered the WNBA’s detractors and publicly treated the league as a burden, essentially tanking their own asset. Not coincidentally, these public degradations always ramp up when its time for a new CBA to be bargained — last year, as the WNBA was coming off of one of its most successful seasons ever and players were on the verge of opting out of the current CBA, some NBA owners leaked their frustrations and impatience with the league’s financial situation to the media.
I understand why Collier focused on Engelbert. It hurts more when the criticism comes from someone who is ostensibly on your side, and Engelbert is who Collier and the players interface with the most. But pretending that getting rid of Engelebert would solve the problems the players are trying to address in labor negotiations is naive at best. She is not acting in a vacuum. Her job is not to speak against NBA owners; it is, in many ways, to speak for them.
And it sure seems that Engelbert has the script down pat.
Towards the top of her statement on Tuesday, Collier said something that pricked my ears: “The league has a buzzword that they rolled out as a talking point for the CBA as to why they can’t pay the players what we’re worth; that word is sustainability.”
The concepts of sustainability and gratitude have long been weaponized against female athletes to keep them from asking for more money and resources, often to devastating consequence. In the NWSL, the Yates Report revealed that coaches, owners and the league office had used those notions to keep players silent about a toxic culture that included systemic sexual abuse. There are no reports of a similar environment in the WNBA, but the playbook throughout WNBA history has been a similar one — message that players should be grateful for the crumbs they are given, and that if they rock the boat in any way by demanding more, they would be the ones responsible for the league folding.
It is, of course, much harder to argue these days that the WNBA is on the verge of folding. A $2.2 billion media rights deal kicks in next season, additional media deals are on the way, attendance records are being smashed, ratings are soaring, franchise valuations are reaching $500 million and expansion fees are selling for $250 million. So the undermining from Engelbert and her cohorts feels even more sinister now, as if those in charge are afraid of how successful the WNBA has become despite their efforts to marginalize it.
Collier clearly sensed the same thing in her conversations with league leaders.
“For too long, I’ve tried to have these conversations in private, but it’s clear there’s no intention of accepting there’s a problem,” Collier said. “The league has made it clear it isn’t about innovation, it isn’t about collaboration, it’s about control and power.”
As the WNBA has grown over the past five years, it could have tried to establish some independence from the NBA. Instead, the two organizations have become even more intertwined, with NBA owners and NBA markets clearly having a major leg up when it comes to WNBA expansion. While the $250 million expansion fees are nice (though it could be argued that the price will look like a bargain by the time the franchises in Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland debut in the next few years), it is alarming that more and more power over the WNBA’s future keeps going into the hands of a league that has spent decades devaluing it.
The truth is, most NBA owners never wanted the WNBA to exist in the first place. If Engelbert is ousted — which is what the players seem to want — it’s hard to imagine the NBA hiring someone in her place who would behave any differently. Any credit the NBA is given for keeping the WNBA’s lights on over the years needs to be balanced with the steps those same people have taken to make sure those lights remain dim.
Collier’s statement on Tuesday was a declaration that the players are ready to step into their power and fight. The hope is that they recognize who they are truly fighting against.
