MIAMI \u2014 Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier will have surgery on both ankles and is expected to be sidelined four to six months, including the upcoming Unrivaled season, the three-on-three women’s basketball league announced Thursday.<\/p>\n
Collier had been rehabbing ankle injuries suffered during the WNBA season but said last month that she was working back to full strength so she could be available for Unrivaled’s second season, which begins Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am heartbroken to share that I will miss this Unrivaled season,\u201d Collier said in a statement on Instagram. \u201cI have fought hard over the last few months to be back with my (Lunar) Owls and was devastated to be told by my team of doctors that surgery was the best path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2024 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year suffered a\u00a0sprained right ankle\u00a0during an August game against the Las Vegas Aces and missed several weeks. She then\u00a0hurt her left ankle in Game 3\u00a0of the WNBA semifinals against the Phoenix Mercury.<\/p>\n
Unrivaled, which Collier co-founded with fellow WNBA star Breanna Stewart, said a \u201cjoint team of medical staff\u201d determined that surgery on both ankles would be needed for Collier, named the three-on-three league’s MVP last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will still be cheering on my teammates every step of the way,” Collier said in the statement, “and I will continue to work relentlessly to push our sport forward and raise the bar for women’s basketball. I will be back at full strength as soon as possible and ready to continue where I left off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Temi F\u00e1gb\u00e9nl\u00e9 will take Collier’s spot on the Lunar Owls for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier will have surgery on both ankles and is expected to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-382847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382847","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=382847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}