{"id":134823,"date":"2025-09-10T23:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T23:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134823\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T23:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T23:04:08","slug":"unrivaled-announces-two-expansion-teams-for-year-2-with-stars-like-paige-bueckers-set-to-join-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134823\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrivaled announces two expansion teams for Year 2 with stars like Paige Bueckers set to join league"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Article-featuredImageImg\" alt=\"unrivaled.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/unrivaled.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" height=\"433\" width=\"770\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women&#8217;s basketball league founded by <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/players\/26678022\/breanna-stewart\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Breanna Stewart<\/a> and <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/players\/26677824\/napheesa-collier\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Napheesa Collier<\/a>, will expand from six to eight teams for its second season in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The league announced the two new franchises &#8212; Breeze and Hive &#8212; on Wednesday, as it prepares for its second year as the preferred offseason league for WNBA stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As of this moment, there&#8217;s no information on who will be playing for either team, but there are some stars expected to join Unrivaled for its second season that could be in play as captains.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The most notable of those is <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/players\/29366453\/paige-bueckers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paige Bueckers<\/a>, who signed an NIL deal with Unrivaled to promote the brand while she was a senior at UConn that gave her an equity stake in the fledgling league. The presumptive Rookie of the Year for the <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/teams\/DAL\/dallas-wings\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dallas Wings<\/a> will play in Unrivaled in 2026 and would make sense as a team captain for one of the expansion squads.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The biggest name not connected to Unrivaled yet is <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/players\/29362921\/caitlin-clark\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Caitlin Clark<\/a>. Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6613592\/2025\/09\/10\/unrivaled-womens-basketball-league-expansion-teams\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">told The Athletic<\/a> there is &#8220;no current dialogue taking place&#8221; between Clark and Unrivaled, but the <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/teams\/IND\/indiana-fever\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fever<\/a> superstar would obviously be the biggest potential addition Unrivaled could make.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With the two new teams, there will be 12 new permanent roster spots opened up for players to join Unrivaled, bringing the total to 48 players. The league also plans on adding another six players that will be in Miami as development players who aren&#8217;t assigned to a team to start, but can help fill in for injuries that occur during the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Given the uncertainty about the 2026 WNBA season as a potential work stoppage looms <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/wnba\/news\/wnba-cba-negotiations-three-paths-forward-with-wnbpa-league-reportedly-unlikely-to-agree-to-deal-by-deadline\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">amid contentious CBA negotiations<\/a>, Unrivaled expanding presents even more opportunities for players to join and bolster their WNBA salaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Images Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women&#8217;s basketball league founded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, will expand from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4657,49,735,48,3459,2803,729,4658,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-134823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-breanna-stewart","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-caitlin-clark","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-dallas-wings","13":"tag-indiana-fever","14":"tag-napheesa-collier","15":"tag-paige-bueckers","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}