WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is under fire, but the NBA is the real power worth challenging

If it was at Napheesa Collier, I am sure she would have spent much more healthy afternoon in good Tuesday afternoon and prepared with her Minnesota Lynx teammates to play Phoenix Mercury in match 5 of the semi-finals of the WNBA. But the Lynx season suddenly ended with a defeat in match 4 Sunday afternoon while collier was seated on the sidelines in a walking boot and head coach Cheryl Reeve served a suspension of a match in a nearby hotel room, the two consequences of a Dramatic end of match 3.

So, instead of making a pre-match shot and reviewing a match plan with coaches on Tuesday, Collier spent the afternoon making a very different strategic decision-degenerating the ABC fight between the WNBA and the WNBA Players Association of an conflict with an active war.

“We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world. But at the moment, we have the worst leadership in the world,” said collar in a long pre-written statement that she delivered at the start of her exit interview with the media.

The whole masterful statement is worth reading and listening. She did what I expected to do – save the comments of Reeve’s suspension on poor official, the increase in physicality and the need for leadership change.

But then, she made the unexpected: to describe her interactions behind the scenes with the managers of the WNBA League, in particular Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

She characterized Engelbert as Disstrames, Impersonable, Condescending and Callous, Saying that in Talks in February, Englebert Told Colier That Caitlin Clark “Should be Guteful She Makes $ 16 million off the court because without the platform the wnba gives her, 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 that she was “discouraged by the way Napheesa characterized our conversations and our leaders of the League”).

Engelbert was raked by the coals by players, fans and media members in the last 72 hours, and rightly so. But there is another entity which should receive at least as much – if not more – criticism than Engelbert: the NBA.

Because Gelbert is not really the one in charge; The NBA is.

WNBA has a single property structure. For most of its existence, the NBA held 50% of the league. But in 2021, the WNBA raised $ 75 million in capital to an evaluation of $ 400 million, which gave this group of investors a share of equity of 16% – half of the participation of the NBA and the other half of the participation of the WNBA, diluting both sides at 42% each.

However, it is not fair to say that the NBA holds only 42% of the WNBA, because several owners of the NBA were part of the increase in land capital, and many WNBA teams also; Today, six of the 13 WNBA teams belong to their NBA counterparts, and four of the five expansion teams to come over the next four years are also managed by the owners of the NBA. The owners of the NBA collectively have on 60% WNBA.

This means that the boss of Engelbert is the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver and the rest of the owners of the NBA. She must obtain their membership for everything she does. This is probably why the characterization of collar of the leaders of Engelbert and the WNBA seemed so familiar. These are the same lines as WNBA fans and players intend to come from the NBA since the creation of the WNBA.

2025 WNBA prediction finals: choice of experts for aces against mercury while Phoenix tries to upset himself

Jack Maloney

For decades, Silver publicly complained about the lack of popularity and profitability of the WNBA, while doing very little to invest in its success. Usually people who own companies speak to them publicly and praise their successes; Instead, the NBA allowed the detractors of the WNBA and publicly treated the League as a burden, essentially by tanning their own asset. Not by coincidence, these public degradations are still increasing at the time when a new CBA was negotiated – last year, while the WNBA left one of its most successful seasons and that the players were about to withdraw from the current ABC, certain owners of the NBA disclosed their frustrations and their impatience with the financial situation of the League in the media.

I understand why necklace focused on Engelbert. It hurts more when criticism comes from someone who is ostensibly on your side, and Engelbert is who colliers and the players interface the most. But claiming that getting rid of Engelbert would solve the problems to which players are trying to solve in the work negotiations is at best naive. She does not act in a vacuum. His work is not to speak against the owners of the NBA; It is, in many ways, to speak for them.

And it seems that Engelbert has the Down Pat script.

Towards the top of his statement on Tuesday, Collier said something that bit my ears: “The League has a fashionable word they have deployed as a subject of discussion for ABC to know why they cannot pay the players what we are worth; this word is sustainability.”

The concepts of sustainability and gratitude have long been armed against female athletes to prevent them from asking for more money and resources, often for a devastating consequence. In the NWSL, the Yates report revealed that the coaches, the owners and the league office had used these notions to keep silent players on a toxic culture which included systemic sexual abuse. There is no report of a similar environment in the WNBA, but the game book in the history of the WNBA has been similar – a message that players should be grateful for the crumbs given to them, and if they are shaking the boat in a way by demanding more, they would be responsible for folding the league.

It is, of course, much more difficult to support these days than the WNBA is about to fold. An agreement on media rights of $ 2.2 billion between next season, additional media agreements are underway, attendance records are in bursting, the ratings are skyrocketed, the franchise assessments reach $ 500 million and the expansion costs are sold for $ 250 million. Thus, the thinness of Engelbert and his cohorts feels even more sinister now, as if the officials were afraid of the success of the WNBA despite their efforts to marginalize it.

Necklace clearly felt the same thing in his conversations with the leaders of the League.

“For too long, I have tried to have these conversations in private, but it is clear that there is no intention to accept that there is a problem,” said collar. “The League has clearly indicated that it is not a question of innovation, it is not a question of collaboration, it is control and power.”

While the WNBA has grown in the past five years, it could have tried to establish a certain independence from the NBA. Instead, the two organizations have become even more intertwined, the owners of the NBA and the NBA markets having a significant lightness with regard to the expansion of the WNBA. Although the expansion fees of $ 250 million are pleasant (although it can be said that the price will look like a good deal when the franchises of Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland in the coming years), it is alarming that more and more power over the future of the WNBA continues in the hands of a league that has passed.

The truth is that most owners of the NBA never wanted the WNBA to exist first. If Engelbert is ousted – this is what the players seem to want – it is difficult to imagine the NBA hiring someone in their place which would behave differently. Any credit that the NBA is granted to keep the WNBA lights over the years must be balanced with the steps that these same people have taken to ensure that these lights remain weak.

Tuesday, the collar declaration was a statement that players are ready to enter their power and fight. Hope is that they recognize who they really fight against.