Aces rising above the WNBA's noise
As a hot league tries to handle success, A'ja Wilson and Las Vegas keep winning
I
It is difficult to win any basketball game by a score of 111–58, and it’s much harder for a championship team to lose one. It happened on August 2, not that long ago, to the Las Vegas Aces.
Such a score, this time at the hands of the Minnesota Lynx, is usually written off by the losing coach. Just flush it, after you cut up the tape and throw it into the bowl. But that’s the thing about coaching A’Ja Wilson. The four-time MVP of the WNBA can use her own voice, unprompted.
“If you’re not embarrassed from yesterday,” Wilson texted her teammates, “then don’t come into the gym. You’re not needed or wanted here. We need the mindset to shift, because that was embarrassing.”
Later, she said, “At first I thought that I didn’t want my teammates to feel everything I’m feeling right now. Then I realized, how can I help them? I was dissecting the game in my head. It was just that they were playing harder. That’s when I decided to send that text.”
The Aces were 14-14 at that time and not at all assured of making the playoffs. They won every regular season game after that. They had to survive winner-take-all games against Indiana (in overtime) and Seattle (a shot by Jackie Young with 12 seconds left) to reach the Finals. Now they’re up 2-0 in those Finals after 89-86 and 91-78 wins over Phoenix. Apparently everybody found her way back to the gym.
Another championship would be the Aces’ third in four seasons. Any league needs a dominant, polarizing team and player. Wilson and the Aces might not spread antagonism. They leave that to Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, and to the general, mounting antipathy between the players and league management. But they’re installing a velvet rope.
Wilson put up 28 points and 14 rebounds on Sunday. Young scored 32, including 20 in the third quarter. On Friday it was Dana Evans who roared off the bench with 21 points in 26 minutes. That was the game in which coach Becky Hammon, dismayed at how easily Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas was capturing the lane, ordered up a zone defense and snuffed Phoenix’s final shot. It helped that Thomas, the league’s assist leader, missed two foul shots in the final minute.. That’s part of winning, the willingness to let the other team lose.
It all starts with Wilson, whose footwork and versatility give her the open 10-footers that most players can’t even visualize. She rules the backboards, too. She’s sort of like Tim Duncan without the reliance on the bank shot. Her romantic partner is Bam Adebayo, the Olympian from the Miami Heat; word is their unborn child has already committed to Duke. Adebayo personally delivered Wilson’s fourth MVP trophy, much to her surprise.
“The biggest thing I want in life is for her to win,” Adebayo said. “I want her to keep setting a higher standard to where people think it’s impossible unti lit’s done. I want people to say this is the greatest women’s player to ever touch a basketball, from the time she touched it to the time she left.”
She’s working on it. And she and the rest of the Aces work alongside Hammon, not a step behind her. After the Minnesota debacle, Hammon told Wilson, Gray and other veterans to help concoct the game plans themselves. At one point Friday night, it was Gray, not Hammon, who was handling the erase board in a team huddle.
The other notable part of this Final is that it’s best-of-seven, just like the real sports leagues do it. And the WNBA no longer wraps everything up by Labor Day in order to tiptoe its way past the NFL. Game 2 was on Sunday, right in the second NFL telecasting “window.” That’s the surest indication that the league has wedged out its own identity, as is the arrival of expansion teams in Portland and Toronto next year and Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia by 2030. All will look at this year’s newcomer, the Golden State Valkyries, as the avatar. They sold out San Francisco’s Chase Center all 22 times they played there, setting league attendance records, and their value is a league-high $500 million. Beyond that, coach Natalie Makase supervised an exciting team of former sixth women and put them in the playoffs.
Last week the WNBA reached an 11-year TV agreement with USA Network that expands the reach of the deal the league signed with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC in 2024. That one also lasted 11 years and is to pay the league $2.2 billion.
But the league is riding a comet that might flame out on Halloween. That’s the day the collective bargaining agreement expires. The average player of a WNBA player is $120,000 and the highest salary is $249K. That is no longer enough when it represents seven percent of the league’s revenue, down from 11 percent four years ago.
WNBA players have never gotten a fixed percentage of revenue in their CBAs. NBA players, and players from most leagues, do get a percentage, usually around 50 percent. Negotiations have been glacial so far.
It got personal last week when Napheesa Collier of the Lynx relayed comments made by commissioner Cathy Engelbert during an exit interview. Collier said the league featured the best players and best quality of play in the world, but also had “the worst leadership in the world.” As an example, Collier said Engelbert told her Clark and other WNBA stars should be “on their knees” in gratitude to the league and that Clark makes $16 million off the court because of the “platform” the league provides. This, of course, is pure hogwash to the ears in of those who remember how Clark dominated the bandwidth of all sports while she was playing for Iowa. She had already signed a $28 million, eight-year deal with Nike before she ever turned pro. The WNBA should be on its knees thanking Clark for not forming her own CCBA.
Clark said she was in alignment with what Collier did, and former WNBA star Elena Della Donne said she wasn’t even sure Engelbert knew she had retired. But the commissioner replied that she was tired of the “inaccuracies” that Collier was promoting, even though she promised she “would do better.” Like most people who are accused of lying, Collier did not react well. She canceled a meeting with Engelbert.
But money isn’t the biggest problem. Coaches are nearly unanimous in their exasperation with the officiating, with Cheryl Reeve of the Lynx calling it “malpractice.” It’s not good when women’s basketball games permit more unpunished contact than water polo matches do. Collier said she brought this up to Engelbert last year, and the commissioner replied, “Only losers complain about the refs.”
“We go to battle every day to protect a shield that doesn’t value us,” said Collier, one of many WNBA players who remember how excruciating it was to get chartered air travel, which finally came along last season.
Engelbert has lined up the sponsors and investors to help the WNBA break through, but the disconnect with the players might be too extreme to keep her around. The commissioner’s job should have wide appeal, but the first call should go to Ann Meyers Drysdale, who was among the game’s pioneers and is still a vice president of the Mercury.
Although the WNBA’s conflicts are unusually personal, they’re not unusual. It’s actually a barometer of growth. There’s real money here, and money is the loose ball that sends everyone to the floor. The league needs a boss that doesn’t expects its A’ja Wilsons and Napheesa Colliers to stay there.