{"id":174974,"date":"2025-09-22T23:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T23:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/174974\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T23:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T23:31:07","slug":"bueckers-rivers-wheeler-among-unrivaled-additions-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/174974\/","title":{"rendered":"Bueckers, Rivers, Wheeler among Unrivaled additions for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unrivaled officially announced the addition of WNBA Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers<\/a> on Monday, along with five other player signings for the upcoming 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Bueckers signed a three-year deal with the women’s 3-on-3 league<\/a> back in April, also becoming an investor<\/a>. The No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft earned $78,831 in her rookie season, per the league’s collective bargaining agreement; sources told ESPN that her first-year salary for the 10-week Unrivaled season will exceed what she would make in four years of her WNBA rookie contract.<\/p>\n

Bueckers averaged 19.2 points, 5.4 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 36 games en route to being named WNBA Rookie of the Year<\/a>. She tallied the third-most points (692) and assists (194) by a rookie in WNBA history and also set the single-game rookie scoring record<\/a> with 44 points at Los Angeles<\/a> on Aug. 20.<\/p>\n

Fellow rookie Saniya Rivers<\/a>, the eighth pick in this year’s draft by the Connecticut Sun<\/a>, and Seattle Storm<\/a> guard Erica Wheeler<\/a> were also announced as first-time Unrivaled players on Monday.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

In addition, Alyssa Thomas<\/a>, Rickea Jackson<\/a> and Satou Sabally<\/a> will be returning for their second season.<\/p>\n

Player announcements continue Tuesday, with six players being revealed each weekday through Oct. 1. Rosters will be unveiled in November, with the season tipping off on Jan. 5.<\/p>\n

With the addition of two new clubs — the Hive and the Breeze — and an additional development player pool, there will be 54 players participating in Unrivaled’s second season.<\/p>\n

The expansion came a year earlier than originally planned, after the league got a $340 million valuation in early September.<\/p>\n

The average salary of players will remain at six figures. Last season, players earned an estimated average salary of $222,222, and all received equity in the league. Moving forward, select athletes who join the league will also receive equity, but this will be decided on a case-by-case scenario as contracts are negotiated.<\/p>\n

“If we didn’t expand rosters, there were going to be All-Stars [wanting to join] who we didn’t have space for,” league president Alex Bazzell told ESPN. “We want to be the home for all of the best players in the world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unrivaled officially announced the addition of WNBA Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers on Monday, along with five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-174974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}