Napheesa Collier was angry when the Minnesota Lynx lost Game 5 of the WNBA Finals in October. Given her own stellar play in that series, and the combined shortcomings of the referees and her backcourt in Game 5, she was right to be. These days, she is no less angry. In an interview with Taylor Rooks in January, prefacing that she might “get beef for saying this,” Collier declared that she would never get over the loss. When Rooks asked her what she meant by “getting beef,” Collier explained, “People just calling me a sore loser. I’m like, I am a sore loser. It sucks! I agree with you. I am very sore about losing.”
One of the problems the startup basketball league Unrivaled was meant to solve was that WNBA stars’ overseas arrangements kept them out of sight, out of mind for a long time. To brands or corporate sponsors, it was hardly ideal for a potential endorser to spend only half the year stateside. To fans and players, there was something else frustrating about these big offseason gaps. Last impressions are strong, and six months is too much time to keep stewing in them.
In her month of play at Unrivaled, which she co-founded with Breanna Stewart, Collier has looked like the league’s best player. Her Lunar Owls team features Lynx teammate Courtney Williams; the consistently clutch Skylar Diggins-Smith; and Allisha Gray, your favorite basketball player’s favorite basketball player, whose two-way greatness has unfortunately been wasted on some crummy teams. Through eight games, the Lunar Owls are undefeated. They’ve also been well-represented in the league’s midseason 1-on-1 tournament, a gimmick I’d love to see the WNBA and NBA steal for their own All-Star Weekends, if only to supply fans with extra debate fodder.
I watched the 1-on-1 tournament tepidly at first, when the crowd and booth seemed unsure of what note to strike, and then more eagerly on Tuesday night, when the vibes improved for the second round and quarterfinals. The final four contestants are Collier, Aaliyah Edwards of Unrivaled’s Mist and the WNBA’s Mystics, Vinyl/Wings star Arike Ogunbowale, and Azurá Stevens, your favorite basketball writer’s favorite basketball player (assuming, as I do, that your favorite basketball writer is me). They’ll play in the semifinals and finals on Friday.
To the extent that there’s a 1-on-1 tournament “meta,” it seems to be some combination of size, strength, stamina to chase down rebounds, and courage. (The latter explains Courtney Williams’s gritty win over 6-foot-2 Rhyne Howard.) The bracket made no attempts at category or division; it matched point guards against post players, big wings against shooters. In the first round, poor 5-foot-11 Chelsea Gray drew the short (tall?) straw with 6-foot-5 Shakira Austin. This setup felt, amusingly, like the sort of thing Stewart, Collier and literally no other people were consulted on. The idea that every contestant should be prepared to guard and score on every other contestant must have struck those two as routine.
This scheme didn’t actually serve Stewart so well. She flamed out in the first round; eighth-seeded Edwards not only beat her in the make-it, take-it race to 11, but also held Stewart to zero points. Edwards’s rookie season went unsung on a weak Mystics team last year, but her wins over Stewart in the first round and Allisha Gray in the quarterfinals shined some extra light on her defensive talents, on which her UConn teams depended greatly. Edwards leans on her size, but she also plays with quick feet; it was exciting to see those come together on offense. To advance to the semifinals, Edwards wriggled free of Gray at the perimeter and zoomed by her for a quick game-winning layup.
Edwards might be the tournament’s breakout player, but watching the more familiar Collier has been just as enjoyable, a kind of basketball comfort food. Stewart laughed off the first-round embarrassment and didn’t seem to be trying too hard by the end of it. Collier, however, timed up the slightly taller Rickea Jackson for a block on the very first play of their second-round matchup. A few possessions later, she trapped Jackson in the corner and dug the ball from her hands. In the past, Collier’s calm nature has read like nonchalance or detachment, but in Unrivaled's tournament, it comes through as something else: a player pissed off, hell-bent on winning.
