Renee Montgomery has a rooting interest in the WNBA Finals, and as far as she knows, nobody at USA Network minds.
Montgomery, a studio analyst for USA Network’s WNBA coverage and a part-owner of the Atlanta Dream, told Front Office Sports that neither USA nor any of her other employers have given her guidelines for discussing the team she co-owns or the league at large, and a USA Network source confirmed to the outlet that no restrictions will be in place as Atlanta takes on the Golden State Valkyries for the title.
Montgomery, who won two WNBA championships as a player and sat out the 2020 season to focus on social justice initiatives, also provides studio coverage for CBS and TNT Sports, and she told FOS that none of her three employers has raised any concerns about her ownership stake.
“I’m sure that if I had companies that I worked for that felt like there was a bias, I’m sure that they would let me know,” Montgomery said.
She did acknowledge that her position might warrant more scrutiny if she were calling games instead of analyzing them from the studio. Play-by-play voices and game analysts are typically in the building for every game, she told FOS, giving them access to players and coaches at shootaround and in the hours before tipoff that a studio analyst doesn’t have.
Her CBS work is studio-based as well, and in March, Kenny Smith’s illness during the NCAA Tournament moved her to the network’s main desk in New York for Round of 64 coverage alongside host Adam Zucker, Clark Kellogg and Charles Barkley. That turn in the spotlight helped earn her a place among Awful Announcing’s sports media rising stars of 2026 two months later. She has been just as visible at TNT, where she and host Lauren Jbara have anchored Unrivaled studio coverage since the league tipped off in January 2025. The network sent the pair to Berlin in September to lead its FIBA Women’s World Cup coverage, with Montgomery and Tina Charles serving as its primary studio analysts.
USA Network and CNBC will carry Game 3 of the Finals on Wednesday, Oct. 21, after the WNBA moved the game up one day from its original Thursday slot because of a concert at State Farm Arena. The change lets the Dream host Games 3 and 4 at the Hawks’ arena instead of the 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena, where they played most of their regular-season home games, and it also moved Game 4 up two and a half hours to avoid a conflict with the Hawks’ home opener.
USA Network will carry Montgomery’s studio coverage of the Dream for at least one more game after Game 3, with a potential Game 6 in Atlanta still unscheduled because of a Hawks home game at State Farm Arena that night.