The new offseason women’s basketball league Unrivaled tips off Friday night on a soundstage in Miami. When co-founders Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier announced plans in 2023 to start their new single-site 3x3 league, they imagined it as a complement to the WNBA. Until recently, most WNBA players spent the offseason playing in overseas leagues, where money flowed freely. But for a mess of geopolitical and financial reasons, good opportunities in Europe and Asia are harder to find these days.
In a 2018 story for Bleacher Report, Mirin Fader reported that overseas contracts were already “drying up,” and players have reevaluated the risks accordingly. Russia, once a prime destination for WNBA stars, is no longer a real option in the wake of the Ukraine invasion and Brittney Griner’s 10-month detainment. The 2020 collective bargaining agreement’s “prioritization clause,” prohibiting players from arriving to WNBA training camp late from overseas obligations, is another factor. So is the growing number of opportunities stateside for women’s basketball players in coaching, brand marketing, and broadcasting.
Some athletes have spent the last few offseasons playing in Athletes Unlimited, another U.S. offseason league, but Unrivaled beats AU in money and star power. Alex Bazzell, Collier’s husband and Unrivaled’s president, told SB Nation that the league’s total salary pool for its 36 players is more than $8 million. News about the league has come in a cascade of buzzy press releases, announcing Unrivaled's new celebrity investors or its multi-year broadcast deal with TNT.
Unrivaled rolled out the names of participating players with strange social media hints throughout the WNBA season and into the winter. At the end of December, Sabrina Ionescu became the final player to join the Unrivaled roster; the league teased this news using an animation of a waddling duck with a snake illustration floating on its body. The final player pool is impressive, though there are a few clear absences: A’ja Wilson said in September that she’d just be “chilling” this offseason; Kelsey Plum backed out in late November; Finals MVP Jonquel Jones is playing in China; and though the league reportedly prepared a “Lionel Messi-like offer” for Caitlin Clark, she will not play in Unrivaled this season.
The players decamp to Miami for two months following a WNBA season in which their earning power began to outpace the infrastructure around them. Griner, who has said she will not play overseas again but found herself missing the structure of offseason play last winter, told reporters that Unrivaled’s salaries and amenities are “definitely going to put pressure on the [WNBA] to do better.” For another sign that inept WNBA owners and front offices will be left behind in the coming years, you could do worse than Satou Sabally’s Unrivaled media day, where she announced that she’d played her last game as a Dallas Wing. As a restricted free agent, she’ll likely be sign-and-traded to a new team.
At its heart, though, Unrivaled might just renew an old tension rather than present a new one. The whole setup of the WNBA—where short schedules, tight rotations, and small rosters make it hard for players to improve or carve out new roles—has always forced players to find other ways to grow. This is just another way. “We want to do Unrivaled so the W gets better,” Collier told the NBA on TNT postgame show on Wednesday night, suggesting that she didn’t see the relationship in antagonistic terms.
The WNBA has always suffered for the way it limits development. Time to work on particular skills is a luxury enjoyed by NBA players but not always available in women's basketball. The 3x3 format on a condensed "full court" should give a range of players the on-ball reps they might not get in regular-season play, and they'll get those reps in a best-on-best environment.
Still, it would be wrong to discount what Griner said. Interesting things can happen when athletes spend time together. Players still recognize the WNBA’s bubble season in Bradenton, Fla. as a rare instance when everyone in the league could convene for players-only meetings. “We get to workout, use the weight room, create new bonds/friendships, get treatment, get massages, use the sauna, getting 2 meals a day, and then a facial before I leave for the day??? yeah i love it here 😭💓,” Angel Reese tweeted on Wednesday. Then she quote-posted with another message: “oh & trust me, a lot of these things will be in chicago this year as well! @FREE AGENTS.”
Collier and Stewart, who both serve on the executive committee of the WNBA players' union, never pitched Unrivaled as a networking tool, but that's what it might turn out to be. On the podcast she hosts with her partner Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird imagined “the WNBA free agency chatter that must be happening—in the training room, when they’re out shopping, when they’re getting some coffee… It used to be what we did during USA Basketball camps, because that’s really one of the few times where the top talent was in the same place at the same time for consecutive days. And now they’re together for like two months during WNBA free agency.”
With a sly smile, Rapinoe replied, “I would be paying for Satou’s coffees.”
