Unrivaled announced the addition of WNBA Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers on Monday, along with five other player signings for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Bueckers signed a three-year deal with the women’s 3-on-3 league\u00a0in April and also became an investor. The No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft earned\u00a0$78,831 in her rookie season, per the league’s collective bargaining agreement. Sources told ESPN that her first-year salary for the 10-week Unrivaled season will exceed what she would make in four years of her WNBA rookie contract.<\/p>\n
Bueckers averaged 19.2 points, 5.4 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 36 games en route to being named WNBA Rookie of the Year. She tallied the third-most points (692) and assists (194) by a rookie in WNBA history and also set the single-game rookie scoring record with 44 points at Los Angeles\u00a0on Aug. 20.<\/p>\n
Saniya Rivers, the eighth pick in this year’s draft by the Connecticut Sun, and Seattle Storm guard Erica Wheeler were also announced as first-time Unrivaled players on Monday.<\/p>\n
In addition, Alyssa Thomas, Rickea Jackson and Satou Sabally will be returning for their second season.<\/p>\n
Player announcements continue Tuesday, with six players being revealed each weekday through Oct. 1. Rosters will be unveiled in November, with the season tipping off Jan. 5.<\/p>\n
With two new clubs — the Hive and the Breeze — and an additional development player pool, 54 players will be participating in Unrivaled’s second season.<\/p>\n
The league expanded a year earlier than originally planned, after it got a $340 million valuation in early September.<\/p>\n
Players’ average salaries remain at six figures. Last season, players earned an estimated average salary of $222,222, and all received equity in the league. Moving forward, select athletes who join the league will also receive equity, but this will be on a case-by-case basis as contracts are negotiated.<\/p>\n
“If we didn’t expand rosters, there were going to be All-Stars [wanting to join] who we didn’t have space for,” league president Alex Bazzell told ESPN. “We want to be the home for all of the best players in the world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unrivaled announced the addition of WNBA Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers on Monday, along with five other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630,80790],"class_list":["post-163520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-sports-basketball-league-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163520","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=163520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}