Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier has cancelled her meeting with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert next week, sources told ESPN on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Collier had previously texted Engelbert that she was open to meeting with her next week to discuss the criticism of Engelbert and the league at her news conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n
But Engelbert’s assertion at a Friday news conference that Collier’s depiction of a private conversation between them was filled with inaccuracies has “pretty much pushed the relationship beyond repair,” as one source put it.<\/p>\n
A league spokesperson told ESPN that Collier had not yet notified Engelbert that she was canceling the meeting.<\/p>\n
Engelbert on Friday vehemently denied saying that\u00a0Caitlin Clark\u00a0and other standouts “should be on their knees” in gratitude because of the platform the league has given them, as Collier claimed.<\/p>\n
“I did not make those comments,” Engelbert said at her annual news conference ahead of Game 1 of the WNBA Finals.<\/p>\n
“There is a lot of inaccuracy out there through social media and all of this reporting,” Engelbert added. “I highly respect the players. There is a lot of emotion and passion going on right now between collective bargaining. … I am obviously disheartened.”<\/p>\n
Engelbert acknowledged there is a lot of work for her to do to rebuild trust with her players but was confident she would be able to do so.<\/p>\n
Players across the league came out in support of Collier and her criticisms of WNBA leadership, including Clark, who said the Lynx star made “valid points.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier has cancelled her meeting with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert next week, sources told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630,80790],"class_list":["post-190367","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\/190367","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=190367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}