{"id":545776,"date":"2026-03-19T01:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/545776\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T01:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:53:08","slug":"nneka-ogwumike-proved-to-be-an-indispensable-wnba-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/545776\/","title":{"rendered":"Nneka Ogwumike proved to be an indispensable WNBA leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Her given name, in the native tongue of the Igbo tribe from Nigeria, means \u201cMother is supreme.\u201d As if her parents knew back in 1990 that she\u2019d be a rock and a protector, they named her Nneka.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At Stanford, she became known as the \u201cQuestion Queen\u201d for her curiosity about the why and her willingness to challenge authority. Now, her colleagues call her \u201cMadam President,\u201d the players union\u2019s fearless leader who guided the league through some of the most challenging moments in the past seven or so years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And when it was all done, she took to social media, a place she scarcely ventures, and confirmed what had been reported and was already being celebrated: that behind Nneka Ogwumike, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/18\/sports\/wnba-reaches-late-night-verbal-cba-agreement-to-likely-save-2026-season\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the players never wavered<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe always told you we were going to stand on business,\u201d she wrote, \u201cand that\u2019s what this looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her given name, in the native tongue of the Igbo tribe from Nigeria, means \u201cMother is supreme.\u201d As&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,2091,2089,630,105474],"class_list":["post-545776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-sports-plus","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-free-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545776","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=545776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}