{"id":396352,"date":"2026-01-09T02:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396352\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T02:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:05:07","slug":"ionescu-sidelined-for-unrivaleds-2nd-season-due-to-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396352\/","title":{"rendered":"Ionescu sidelined for Unrivaled&#8217;s 2nd season due to injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MEDLEY, Fla. &#8212; <a data-player-guid=\"3b205f4b-7b5d-0115-3a92-f8f35ff473ed\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/player\/_\/id\/4066533\/sabrina-ionescu\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sabrina Ionescu<\/a> will not play in the second season of Unrivaled because of an injury sustained during the WNBA season.<\/p>\n<p>The 3-on-3 women&#8217;s basketball league, which began its second season Monday, announced the news Thursday, saying that Ionescu will still be involved with off-court initiatives and partnership opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>The four-time WNBA All-Star with the <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"ad8ccde6-59b3-fbe6-2faf-a835fa224ca1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/team\/_\/name\/ny\/new-york-liberty\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Liberty<\/a> played for Phantom BC during Unrivaled&#8217;s first season and averaged 18.2 points and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While I&#8217;m disappointed I couldn&#8217;t play this season, I&#8217;ll be rooting for the Phantom,&#8221; Ionescu said in a statement. &#8220;I&#8217;m looking forward to working with Unrivaled through content and broadcast opportunities and continuing to support the league&#8217;s success.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ionescu joined <a data-player-guid=\"3050c42f-4845-9e46-c003-1b0adb4c5e14\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/player\/_\/id\/3917450\/napheesa-collier\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Napheesa Collier<\/a> as stars who have been ruled out for Unrivaled&#8217;s second season. Collier, an Unrivaled co-founder and the league&#8217;s 2025 MVP, was set to have surgery on both of her ankles and will be sidelined four to six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDLEY, Fla. &#8212; Sabrina Ionescu will not play in the second season of Unrivaled because of an injury&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-396352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396352","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=396352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}