If all of this sounds very fast, Collier initially planned to move even quicker. “Honestly, we were trying to push to launch in 2024, but that was just way too fast,” she said. “I mean, the sport is just exploding. We knew the time was now, and so the faster you can get in and get it off the ground, the better.” In the end, she said, it was the right choice to wait another year and make sure they were able to create the best experience for fans and players.
Perhaps she learned from the last time she pushed herself a bit too fast. Back in 2022, Collier returned to the Minnesota Lynx just six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Mila, in May, hitting the court for a game after just 11 weeks. “I don’t recommend it. Bad idea,” she tells me with a laugh. “I should have just come to be with the team, but I got back in shape to be able to play.”
Collier stresses that there was no pressure from the team or the league, just her own strong desire to play one more game with her mentor and friend Sylvia Fowles before she retired. In the end, she pushed herself too hard.
“I thought I actually wasn’t going to be able to play in that next WNBA season, because my body was so bad,” she says. “I had to do just rehab the entire offseason. It was just so painful. And it turned out I have an autoimmune disease, so that affects my joints.” Add that to all the hormones that come with pregnancy, and Collier says the experience “changed the chemistry of my body,” and she was forced to “rebuild.”
She still made the All-WNBA First Team and the WNBA All-Defensive Second Team in 2023. The year after that, she was named defensive player of the year and earned her second Olympic gold medal. Despite missing seven games due to an ankle injury in August, she put out history-making stats and was a front-runner for MVP in 2025. As for popularity, she secured 1,176,020 fan votes for this year’s All-Star game, securing the captain spot opposite Caitlin Clark.