MEDLEY, Fla. \u2014 She was a two-time state champion in high school coming out of the Syracuse area. She was a four-time NCAA champion at UConn. She\u2019s won three WNBA titles, three World Cup gold medals, three Olympic gold medals, and even two EuroLeague titles.<\/p>\n
And now, add an Unrivaled title to the mix \u2014 a league that she co-founded.<\/p>\n
Breanna Stewart has won it all.<\/p>\n
Stewart and Mist are the queens of Unrivaled for 2026, topping Phantom 80-74 in the championship game Wednesday night to cap the league\u2019s second season. Stewart scored 32 points, setting the tone by scoring Mist\u2019s first 12 points of the second half and her team \u2014 which went 0-2 against Phantom in the regular season \u2014 wouldn\u2019t trail again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I’ll remember the most about this Mist team is we might not be the loudest, but we’re going to work the hardest,\u201d said Stewart, who was picked as MVP of the final \u2014 and whose team will split a $600,000 winners’ pool.<\/p>\n
It ended somewhat controversially: an offensive foul on Stewart was overturned to a block on review, giving her a free throw to win the title. Stewart swished the shot, and confetti fell from the roof in celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust focused on doing it for my team,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Plum carried Phantom with 40 points on 14-for-21 shooting, along with six rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n
It was a brilliant effort \u2014 but Stewart and Mist had just a bit too much. Arike Ogunbowale had 19 and Allisha Gray scored 12 for Mist, while Kiki Iriafen scored 13 and Tiffany Hayes had 12 for Phantom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was complete faith in this group,\u201d Mist coach Zach O’Brien said. \u201cI’m just glad we got it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart and Napheesa Collier are credited as the co-founders of the league, one that if nothing else has filled a void on calendar for the women\u2019s pro game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that there was a space that wasn\u2019t kind of being used as far as what professional women\u2019s basketball players were doing,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cWe used to have a seven-month blackout period where you didn\u2019t know what these professional basketball players were doing. And now you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question is what comes next.<\/p>\n
The WNBA and its players do not have a labour agreement for next season, one that is slated \u2014 at this point \u2014 to start in about two months. The WNBA has told the players\u2019 union that it needs to get a deal in place by this coming Tuesday to start the season on time.<\/p>\n
And for now, there\u2019s no indication that\u2019ll happen. That means the Mist-Phantom final could be the last professional women\u2019s game in the U.S. for a while.<\/p>\n
Unrivaled \u2014 a 3-on-3, full-court game played on a 72-foot floor, shorter than an NBA or college court \u2014 sells itself on being fast-paced, with an 18-second shot clock, 7-minute quarters and plenty of open space for players to create.<\/p>\n
The title game didn\u2019t disappoint in that regard.<\/p>\n
They were the top two seeds entering the playoffs \u2014 Phantom 1, Mist 2 \u2014 and Wednesday was back and forth. It was 24-24 after one quarter, 43-43 at the half, neither team having led by more than seven at any point.<\/p>\n
Mist led 68-62 going to the fourth, an untimed final quarter where 11 points get added to the leading score as the end-of-game target.<\/p>\n
To win the title: first team to 79 wins. Mist scored the first six points of the final quarter, going up by 12. Plum answered with five straight points, pushing her total to 35 for the night and getting Phantom within 74-67.<\/p>\n
But Mist held the lead the rest of the way, and Stewart \u2014 as she has so many times \u2014 had a title to savour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was our goal from Day One to be here, to be on this podium,\u201d O’Brien said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDLEY, Fla. \u2014 She was a two-time state champion in high school coming out of the Syracuse area.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-515346","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\/515346","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=515346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}