What is the point of Unrivaled? Or rather, how seriously should it be taken? It\u2019s easy to understand what the players get out of it: Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart founded the startup basketball league in 2023 as an offseason option for a few dozen WNBA players, offering them equity and competitive salaries to play 3×3 games on a Miami soundstage. For them it\u2019s a convenient way to get paid, stay in shape, and remain in the U.S. during the winter months, when their earning opportunities have historically been overseas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a media member, I still don\u2019t exactly know how to value Unrivaled as the league begins its second season. The 3×3 game differs so much from WNBA basketball that Unrivaled\u2019s utility as a gauge for player development is dubious. Last year, stars who had dismal Unrivaled seasons\u2014Stewart, Aliyah Boston, Satou Sabally\u2014went on to have their typically excellent WNBA seasons. It’s certainly an appealing opportunity for media members to go to Miami in the winter: Last February, I watched games at the Unrivaled facility and found myself genuinely taken by the atmosphere and in-person product. But I also felt kind of silly attending press conferences afterward and asking players questions about a game that still did not feel totally \u201creal.\u201d From the practices I observed\u2014practices of wildly varying rigor\u2014I get the sense that some players take Unrivaled more seriously than others. It won\u2019t shock any women\u2019s basketball fans to know that Collier\u2019s team, the Lunar Owls, practiced the hardest.<\/p>\n
This is why, despite some whispers during the WNBA\u2019s ongoing CBA negotiations with players, I\u2019m skeptical that Unrivaled\u2019s ambitions are to challenge the WNBA for control of American women\u2019s basketball. Same goes for the shadowy \u201cProject B,\u201d<\/a> a forthcoming global 5-on-5 offseason league modeled after Formula 1, with commitments from players such as Nneka Ogwumike and Alyssa Thomas.<\/p>\n Take it from the co-founder of Unrivaled herself: \u201cThe WNBA is something that everyone has looked up to and has grown up watching, and it\u2019s obviously the height of women\u2019s basketball,\u201d Collier\u00a0told ESPN\u2019s Katie Barnes<\/a>\u00a0in an interview published Thursday night. \u201cNo one is trying to get rid of the WNBA. We all want this to work. We just want to be valued in the work that we\u2019re doing. We want to reach that pinnacle together. So that\u2019s all we\u2019re asking for. No one is trying to replace the WNBA or anything like that.\u201d It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if the founders\u2019 vision for \u201csuccess\u201d for Unrivaled is that WNBA salaries increase enough that it no longer needs to exist. A\u00a0recent Front Office Sports story from Annie Costabile<\/a>\u00a0asks whether this might not just end in a formal partnership or acquisition.<\/p>\n Cathy Engelbert, the leader on the other side, has also been inclined to talk about the WNBA and Unrivaled as complements rather than substitutes, if she has been slightly huffy when doing so. At her press conference before the WNBA draft last spring, she sounded a little annoyed by the volume of questions about Unrivaled. She was \u201cso really proud\u201d of Collier and Stewart, but added, \u201cOf course we’ll have\u2014by the time we get done with 16 teams\u2014over 190 players we need to take care of. I know it\u2019s a lot easier to do 30 in one spot. We obviously travel the world and the U.S. and have a big platform.\u201d (She would take this extremely amusing passive-aggressive tack again when answering a question about what ideas the WNBA might borrow from Unrivaled: \u201cObviously, it\u2019s a very small fan base, 800 or so that go to their games. Obviously, we\u2019ll have 17, 15, 18\u201420,000 at our games. So it\u2019s a different scale from a fan perspective. But again, I think it\u2019s great that\u2014again, growing women’s basketball in a different way.\u201d)\u00a0Engelbert\u2019s visit to Unrivaled in February, and conversations she had with Collier there, inspired Collier\u2019s\u00a0eventual denunciation<\/a> of WNBA leadership.<\/p>\n To me, as a women\u2019s basketball consumer, the relationship between the WNBA and Unrivaled is less one of direct competition and more like the one between the straight man in a comedy act and the funny one. You have to have some sense of the world\u2019s norms and rules to appreciate when those norms and rules are subverted. WNBA teams are assembled in a particular way, by particular systems that yield a particular distribution of stars and young players and veterans. But\u00a0Unrivaled shakes all that up. It\u2019s entertaining for the same reason the National Geographic show\u00a0Unlikely Animal Friends\u00a0is entertaining. It\u2019s a cat and a pig! Together! Being friends! You don\u2019t see that so often!\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Last year, before they were upset in the playoffs, the Lunar Owls ran Unrivaled. They were Lynx South. Collier was paired up with her Minnesota teammate Courtney Williams in a preseason trade that sent Jackie Young to the Laces to play with fellow Aces Tiffany Hayes and Kate Martin\u2014the equivalent of that annoying thing All-Star Game captains do where they just draft their teammates. The Lunar Owls, Laces, and their stifling commitment to normalcy are no more: Collier is sitting out the 2026 Unrivaled season while she recovers from surgery on both ankles, and Williams and Martin were re-drafted to new teams.<\/p>\n