said<\/a> the league has “the worst leadership in the world” and a commissioner who lacks accountability in a blistering assessment. The two had planned to meet next week, either in person or virtually.<\/p>\nCollier, who was the runner-up for MVP this season, made the statement during her end-of-season interview Tuesday, after a loss in Game 4 over the weekend to the Phoenix Mercury. Collier was out for that game, as she was injured late in the fourth quarter of Game 3.<\/p>\n
ESPN first reported the meeting was canceled.<\/p>\n
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Steph Chambers \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The commissioner said before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals that comments made by Collier about a private conversation between them were filled with “inaccuracies,” including one about Caitlin Clark needing the WNBA to succeed financially. The commissioner denied saying that.<\/p>\n
“Caitlin has been a transformational player in this league. She’s been a great representative of the game,” Engelbert said. “She’s brought in tens of millions of new fans to the game.”<\/p>\n
Engelbert said Friday there’s work to be done to repair relationships with players in the league.<\/p>\n
“I was disheartened to hear that some players feel the league and that I personally do not care about them or listen to them,” Engelbert said ahead of the WNBA Finals. “If the players in the W don’t feel appreciated and valued by the league, then we have to do better and I have to do better.”<\/p>\n
The league and the players’ union are in the middle of a collective bargaining agreement negotiation as the current deal expires at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lynx’s Napheesa Collier blasts WNBA leadership Lynx’s Napheesa Collier blasts WNBA leadership 02:18 Minnesota forward Napheesa Collier canceled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,735,48,736,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-190804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-caitlin-clark","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-minnesota-lynx","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190804","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=190804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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