{"id":627429,"date":"2026-05-06T19:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627429\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:34:12","slug":"napheesa-collier-admits-cathy-engelbert-rant-was-for-cba-leverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627429\/","title":{"rendered":"Napheesa Collier Admits Cathy Engelbert Rant Was For CBA Leverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September, Napheesa Collier<\/a> said the WNBA had \u201cthe worst leadership in the world,\u201d tearing into league commissioner Cathy Engelbert amid contentious labor negotiations and frustration with officiating.<\/p>\n

The players and owners agreed to a deal in March\u2014and Collier is now walking back her viral comments. In an interview with NPR<\/a> released Wednesday, the five-time All-Star admitted her comments may have gone overboard.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThinking about the state of the world, right, I think that\u2019s a little dramatic,\u201d Collier said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tense for a while just between the players and the league in general. I think it was something that needed to happen and it was something that furthered our CBA negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collier\u2019s initial comments<\/a> about Engelbert came after the Minnesota Lynx<\/a> were eliminated in September. She said that part of criticism of leadership was because she understood how to lead a women\u2019s basketball league. Collier co-founded Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women\u2019s basketball league that launched last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world,\u201d Collier said last fall. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t know exactly what the job entailed, maybe I wouldn\u2019t feel this way, but unfortunately for them, I do. We serve a league that has shown they think championship coaches and Hall of Fame players are dispensable and that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s professional sports, but I will not stand quietly by and allow different standards to be applied at the league level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Collier said that she\u2019s still \u201chappy\u201d with her decision to call out WNBA leadership, but she isn\u2019t pleased with how her statements may have impacted Engelbert personally. Engelbert said was \u201cdisheartened\u201d by Collier\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never want someone\u2019s personal life the way that it was for her,\u201d Collier said. \u201cShe got a lot of backlash for that. And what I was talking about was professionally. When you take things personally, that was an unintended consequence for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collier said that she has not spoken to Engelbert about the comments she made last year, but that the two did speak during marathon CBA negotiations in March.<\/p>\n

At the WNBA finals last fall, Engelbert essentially accused Collier of lying<\/a>, saying she \u201ccertainly did not say\u201d comments Collier recounted about Caitlin Clark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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At the WNBA draft last month, Engelbert was asked about her future as commissioner. The former Deloitte CEO pushed back aggressively<\/a> and suggested the question\u2014asked by a woman\u2014was sexist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do crack up how everybody\u2019s focused on me, and you should be focused on the hundreds of amazing women, and thousands of women who run this league outside of myself \u2026 I wonder whether you would ask that of a man, by the way, but I realize as women we get asked different questions than men do,\u201d Engelbert said.<\/p>\n

The post Napheesa Collier Admits Cathy Engelbert Rant Was For CBA Leverage<\/a> appeared first on Front Office Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In September, Napheesa Collier said the WNBA had \u201cthe worst leadership in the world,\u201d tearing into league commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,18116,12548,1077,3250,99,434,161589],"class_list":["post-627429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-cathy-engelbert","tag-cba","tag-minnesota-lynx","tag-napheesa-collier","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-womens-basketball-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627429","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=627429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}