The WNBA is in a “transformative time,” and the league now must make a “transformative choice” for its next commissioner who can see everyone “through it and beyond,” according to Brian Hamilton of THE ATHLETIC. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is retiring after the 2026 season, and now the league “requires a leader who does everything spectacularly.” The WNBA “cannot miss here.” There can be “no backslide on the business side as the league launches into its next 30 years, but there must be a formidable presence in the chair with a relentless ambition in every phase of the job.” The next commissioner needs to be “present and accounted for much more” than Engelbert was. They also need to create a “connection with players who seem to crave it more than most professional athletes” and they must earn the trust that “makes the unavoidable hard decisions more digestible.” That person also needs to ball up “both fists to take on the cynics and bad actors, all while continuing to make everyone involved more and more money as a world watches.” The new commissioner needs to be a “tone-setter instead of a caretaker.” Hamilton: “Imagine a proactive, authoritative voice confronting the wide and varied controversies the WNBA has dealt with this summer” (THE ATHLETIC, 9/4).
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: THE ATHLETIC’s Candace Buckner wrote the league needs “a special boss” as its next commissioner — someone who can “show business competence and still communicate like a regular person.” Someone who can “anticipate the outside disruptions while empathizing with the targeted workforce inside the storm.” Above all else, the new commissioner “better understand that the WNBA hasn’t reached the finish line of being financially solvent, while still seeing the players as more than just parts of the money machine.” He or she needs to “understand the high-wire act of being in charge while combating the perception of not being warm enough.” It is “unfair, but it’s the dance women leaders have danced since the beginning of time” (THE ATHLETIC, 9/5). THE RINGER’s Seerat Sohi wrote the job will “require political savvy and bridge building.” It will need someone with “enough institutional wisdom to understand the league without being bogged down by the culture of defensiveness and cynicism that has overtaken it.” It will “require someone who can simultaneously nurture the popularity” of Fever G Caitlin Clark and the expansion teams in Golden State, Portland and Toronto. But in the end, the answer will “come down to what” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wants. Sohi: “Does he want a figurehead who can better handle the day-to-day operations, from rule enforcement to marketing, while the NBA pulls the levers on the biggest decisions? Or does he want someone he can trust to forge a future? … Does he want someone who can sell him on the advantages of building the WNBA differently than the NBA?” (THE RINGER, 9/7).
CRUCIAL TIME: In Philadelphia, Mike Sielski wrote this is a “critical moment for women’s athletics and for the WNBA.” The league will add three more franchises in the next four years by adding teams in Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland. It has an “opportunity both to solidify its existing fan base and build upon it.” It has an opportunity to reach a level that, “just a decade ago, few would have thought reachable.” It needs a new commissioner who can “be more than the one Cathy Engelbert was, more than someone sitting on the deck, doing nothing to avoid the swells and crashes, more than someone just along for the ride” (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 9/4).