Lynx's Napheesa Collier blasts WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert: 'We have the worst leadership in the world'
I'm going to pull what I consider to be the most eyebrow raising about what she said:
Napheesa Collier wrote:At Unrivaled this past February, I sat across from Cathy and asked how she planned to address the officiating issues in our league. Her response was, 'Well, only the losers complain about the refs.' I also asked how she planned to fix the fact that players like Caitlin, Angel and Paige, who are clearly driving massive revenue for the league, are making so little for their first four years. Her response was, 'Caitlin should be grateful she makes $60 million off the court because without the platform the WNBA gives her, she wouldn't make anything.'
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.' That's the mentality driving our league from the top. We go to battle every day to protect a shield that doesn't value us. The league believes it succeeds despite its players, not because of them.
So I'll say:
1. I'm shocked that Phee actually put the Commish on blast like this and I'm really not sure if it was the right move.
2. After Phee's public statement, the question of whether she can fairly represent the other players is now wide open in a way I didn't think it was before. Hopefully she doesn't resist being removed by others in the WNBPA.
3. But, the attitude of Engelbert she's describing is precisely what I feared it was. It seems that the WNBA (and surely NBA) really believe that the fact that they were the dominant organization in America's women professional basketball in the time leading up to it's current popularity should mean the players feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude toward the WNBA's leadership, and my god, that's such a huge error on their part.
They need to be recognizing that there's literally never been a time when WNBA players feel more confident in the popularity of the game and their ability to stand together as a union, and if they can't do that because they are too emotionally attached to what loyalty they think players should have, then they're going to be more likely to have a work stoppage.
4. To be clear, the WNBA players could certainly end up being the unreasonable ones in any negotiation, I'm not speaking to "the players deserve more", but what I am saying is that the W's management should desperately want to avoid a work stoppage at this time where they have all these expansion teams coming, and if they insist on WNBA players taking less because they should be "on their knees thanking" for the past, it's not going to help matters.
5. Of course as noted in other conversations on here: The fact that the WNBA didn't taken advantage of the opening that Russian Aggression gave them, and WNBA players thus used this to launch their own league and get higher salaries, puts the W is an extremely awkward place even before we think about the rapid expansion they're planning. They really needed to not let themselves get in this position in the first place.
And if they don't realize this - if they don't realize the effect Unrivaled is bound to have on the WNBPA - then they are setting themselves up to be an org that shepherded American women's pro basketball through the fallow years only to be usurped at the moment when they think they're about to be safe.
