Breanna Stewart And Napheesa Collier Will Start A New Basketball League During The WNBA Offseason

A new women’s basketball league that is designed to give WNBA players a domestic option to continue playing in the offseason is on the horizon. In an interview with Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart and Minnesota Lynx standout Napheesa Collier announced that they’re behind Unrivaled, a collection of 30 players split between six teams playing 3-on-3 and 1-on-1. The league also announced its launch on Twitter in a pair of posts.

Stewart mentioned that the league, which would play its games in Miami, is in part a way to address the WNBA’s prioritization rules, which require that players come back from their overseas teams in time to participate in training camp. Players frequently go overseas in the offseason as a way to continue making money while playing basketball, but the W’s 2020 collective bargaining agreement made that trickier, with Stewart telling ESPN that “It is a rule that takes away our choices, which should never be a thing, especially as women, but it is still a rule.” The full prioritization rules go into effect this offseason.

Stewart explained that she discussed the idea with Collier and Collier’s husband, Alex Bazzell, with Bazzell having the idea for a “3-on-3, one-on-one, queen-of-the-court type thing where you hold bragging rights, but also make a salary that’s kind of set in stone but also can always grow bigger.” Collier went on to lay out the idea behind the league in a thread on her Twitter account, where she announced that Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray will be part of things — Gray, additionally, spoke to Shelburne about joining.

Among the things Collier laid out in her thread were an ownership structure where initial players have a stake in the league with salaries that are “competitive to the WNBA” and a plan to eventually hold events in cities other than Miami. According to Shelburne’s story, the plan is to launch the league next January.