WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert doubles down on commitment to players and looks the part: 'I have to do better'

LAS VEGAS — A game of posturing is underway, even if those involved would rather the attention remain on the WNBA Finals.

After Napheesa Collier aired private conversations in a prepared four-minute scorched-earth statement earlier this week, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert delivered her annual address in Las Vegas ahead of Game 1 with more emotion and less corporate-speak than had become the norm in her tenure.

When pushed directly about whether she told Collier that Caitlin Clark should be grateful for her endorsement money because “without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything,” Engelbert’s brief smile drooped. She nodded slightly in dismay.

“Obviously, I did not make those comments,” Engelbert said in her penultimate answer of the 23-minute press conference. “Caitlin has been a transformational player in this league. She’s been a great representative of the game. She’s brought in 10s of millions of new fans to the game. I’m proud of what she put on the court.”

It was one of her most human and direct moments, in addition to mentioning the impact this week has had on her family and her staff.

Simultaneously, it pitted two women’s basketball league leaders in contradiction to each other.

Neither is known for conflict. But both have something at stake.

That’s not to say either side is lying or playing manipulative games when the cameras turn on. But it's important to remember that all of this is more complicated and calculated than anyone wants to admit. There are ongoing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations, which both sides intend to be “transformational.” The players association isn’t budging on its top priority of a fairer revenue-sharing structure. The league owners won’t divulge their priorities.

“I want to reiterate that we want much of the same things that the players want,” Engelbert said, repeating a line she’s used multiple times in the last year. “We want to significantly, and I mean significantly, increase their salary and benefits, while also supporting the long-term growth and viability of the WNBA.”

Collier, the co-founder of 3x3 league Unrivaled and a WNBPA vice president, went on the public power play a month out from the CBA deadline, and Engelbert, the WNBA’s first commissioner, answered in kind.

Ian Maule via Getty Images

If the critique is that players “battle every day to protect a shield that doesn’t value us,” Engelbert would step into a brightly-lit room filled beyond standing room only to convey the opposite. She’s said she cared for years, including as recently as the All-Star Game draft in July. Now, she made it look the part.

“If the players in the W don’t feel appreciated and valued by the league, then we have to do better, and I have to do better,” Engelbert said. “We know how great these players are on and off the court, how much they mean to our league, our fans and our communities.”

Rather than brush off the officiating issues as losers being upset — as she has in the past and as Collier claimed she did — Engelbert got ahead of it by announcing a multi-stakeholder task force, a “state of the game committee” that will involve players and others to ensure the officiating platform “evolves in step with the growth of the league.”

“It's pretty clear that we're misaligned currently on what our stakeholders want from officiating,” Engelbert said. “We have heard loud and clear that we have not lived up to that needed alignment, and that attention and change is needed to serve the WNBA to the level of excellence that is not currently being met in the various stakeholders' eyes. There are no greater stakeholders than our players. Their voice is integral to the alignment that is required for good officiating, and we look forward to including their perspectives on how our staff can better serve the game moving forward.”

In a week of theatrics that began with Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve getting ejected in the semifinals and blasting the referees and league leadership, the chatter ahead of Engelbert’s address was to bring the popcorn. League staff took their spots in a small press conference room filled to the brim, an anxious aura overtaking the limited oxygen. Because all of this has become just that: a show.

When Engelbert was first asked, eight minutes in, about Collier’s claim that Engelbert said players should “be on their knees thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal I got them,” the commissioner demurred with a standard “there’s a lot of inaccuracy out there through social media and all this reporting.”

“I will tell you, I highly respect the players,” Engelbert said. “There’s a lot of emotion and passion going on right now because we’re in collective bargaining and we’re in the WNBA Final. So I’ll just leave it there.”

It was then that the 60-year-old Engelbert, the first female CEO of Deloitte and a veteran businesswoman in an era largely run by men, said, “I’m a human too” and mentioned her family. Her children, usually in the background, were in charge of the jerseys during the 2020 WNBA Draft that was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Months later, Engelbert was the first commissioner to return her league to play. That decision has been praised by both sides as to why the league is in this moment of exponential growth. Clark is simply the gasoline to that fire, albeit a five-gallon bucket of it.

In a league that has largely, from Engelbert on down, focused on the many, not the one or few, it had to be purposeful that Collier used the names of Clark, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese.

“[Clark is] a 23-year-old kid who loves to play this game who is a pawn in a lot of other people’s games and a lot of other people’s narratives,” Fever head coach Stephanie White said on the Indiana radio show "Query And Company" earlier on Friday. “And I hate that for her.”

Dropping Clark’s name, endorsement money and Engelbert’s supposed remarks snagged the headlines as expected, and riled up the furor that landed on Engelbert as the league’s figurehead. Players stood behind Collier’s overall comments this week, but few called out Engelbert directly. The word often used was “leadership.”

The one conspicuously absent in all this is NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. The WNBA was founded in 1996 under the NBA and then-commissioner David Stern, with a WNBA president who served as the leader. Silver, as Engelbert noted on Friday night, had the idea for a commissioner and hired her. The WNBA is still 42% owned by the NBA, with 42% by individual WNBA team owners — the majority of which are also NBA team owners — and 16% by a private investment group from 2021 that, again, includes NBA stakeholders.

If it all sounds messy, it is. And if this week has proven anything, it's that this saga is far from over.