The WNBA has never been more visible. The best-of-seven-games finals between the Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces will tip off Friday night before what are expected to be the largest TV audiences that women’s basketball has ever drawn. Crowds have swelled, viewership milestones have toppled, franchise valuations are soaring and formerly niche stars have broken into the mainstream. Yet as the league celebrates a second straight year of explosive growth, an old and thorny problem has risen to the surface: officiating.
Complaints about referees have always been louder and more persistent in professional basketball relative to other sports due to the subjectivity of calls and sheer number of decisions. But in the WNBA’s 2025 season, the volume and intensity of the criticism from all sides has reached new heights. Coaches have been ejected and suspended. Star players have vented in press conferences and online. Fans have dissected blown calls with Zapruder-film rigor. What had long been background noise and the province of hoop wonks became the defining subplot of the season, colliding awkwardly with the league’s ongoing surge into the spotlight.
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Schedule
Best-of-seven series. All times Eastern.
Fri 3 Oct Game 1: Phoenix at Las Vegas, 8pm (ESPN)
Sun 5 Oct Game 2: Phoenix at Las Vegas, 3pm (ABC)
Wed 8 Oct Game 3: Las Vegas at Phoenix, 8pm (ESPN)
Fri 10 Oct Game 4: Las Vegas at Phoenix, 8pm (ESPN)
Sun 12 Oct Game 5: Phoenix at Las Vegas, 3pm (ABC)*
Wed 15 Oct Game 6: Las Vegas at Phoenix, 8pm (ESPN)*
Fri 17 Oct Game 7: Phoenix at Las Vegas, 8pm (ESPN)*
*if necessary
The flashpoint came during last week’s semi-finals, when Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve erupted after a no-call on Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas left star forward Napheesa Collier writhing on the floor. The sequence all but decided Game 3 and helped end Minnesota’s season, but not before an apoplectic Reeve stormed on to the court, berated officials and later described their assignment to reporters as “fucking malpractice”. The league suspended Reeve for one game and slapped her with a $15,000 fine, the harshest discipline ever meted out on a WNBA coach in the playoffs.
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Instead of cooling things down, the punishment inflamed debate. Two of Reeve’s peers, Indiana’s Stephanie White and Las Vegas’s Becky Hammon, publicly supported her and were fined $1,000 apiece for their trouble. Both had previously warned about unchecked physicality and inconsistency. “It’s not about bad calls,” Hammon said. “It’s about player safety.”
Related: Lynx star Collier says WNBA has ‘worst leadership in the world’ in withering broadside
Hammon took it even further during the Aces’ semi-final series against Indiana: “The physicality is out of control, that’s for sure. You can bump and grab a receiver in the NFL for those first five yards, but in the W you can do it for the whole half court. You put two hands on somebody like that, it should be an automatic foul. Freedom of movement? There’s no freedom. I’m not saying we’re not fouling too. I’m saying it’s out of control. Most of my assistants come from the NBA, and they’re like, ‘This would not fly in the NBA.’ This level of physicality would not fly in the NBA.”
Collier herself added fuel to the fire on Tuesday at Minnesota’s exit interviews, where she calmly delivered a sensational four-and-a-half-minute prepared statement saying that officiating “has now reached levels of inconsistency that plague our sport and undermine the integrity in which it operates”. She accused the league of “negligence” in ignoring “issues that everyone inside the game is begging to be fixed”, warning that the lack of accountability was eroding trust in the product itself. The unusually blunt words from a five-time All-Star and players’ union vice-president reverberated across the league. Fever guard Lexie Hull said she was “really proud of [Collier] for making that statement,” adding that “things need to change, reffing needs to change, leadership needs to change”.
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Beneath the outrage lies a deeper question: is this simply poor refereeing, or in step with the league’s philosophy? The WNBA has long positioned itself as grittier than the NBA, a style that encourages officials to “let them play” even when contact edges into dangerous territory. Unlike in the NBA, there is little sense of star protection; marquee players from Diana Taurasi to Caitlin Clark have often absorbed bruising contact without whistles.
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There is no evidence of a formal directive, but critics argue that this tolerance for physicality has become ingrained in the league’s DNA, leaving a thinly resourced officiating corps to manage the consequences. Players have echoed the concern. Star players like Kelsey Plum, Angel Reese and Natasha Cloud all questioned officiating this season, arguing that the problem was less isolated mistakes than the nightly uncertainty over what would and would not be called.
No player has drawn more attention than Clark. In one regular-season matchup, she was poked in the eye, then shoved to the ground by Connecticut’s Marina Mabrey. Officials assessed only a technical foul. After a storm of outrage, the league upgraded the penalty to a flagrant two. The episode crystallized a perception that referees were ill-equipped to handle the physical play surrounding the WNBA’s most hyped newcomer. When Clark later needled officials on social media following Indiana’s first-round playoff clincher – “The refs couldn’t stop us” – she was fined $200, a reminder that players pay a price for public criticism even as referees face little visible accountability.
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WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has been careful in her language. She acknowledged concerns during All-Star weekend, stressing that “every play is reviewed” and that hours are spent on follow-up training. “Consistency is important,” she said. “Some people observe our game versus other formats and think there aren’t a ton of fouls called, but consistency is the name of the game.”
The structural disadvantages, however, are real. Unlike the NBA, the WNBA has no off-site replay center; referees on the floor must review plays themselves, a process that can both slow the game and introduce bias. The league also forgoes the Last Two Minute reports that have become a transparency standard in the NBA since their introduction in 2015. With fewer staff devoted to officiating oversight, referees operate with less support and oversight than their NBA counterparts – another reason coaches and players believe inconsistency has become entrenched.
Related: Has the WNBA become a brutal league, or are we just paying more attention now?
Behind the scenes, the officiating pipeline has long had built-in constraints. For two decades, the NBA’s developmental G League has been the proving ground for referees with ambitions of reaching the NBA. Some of those officials are also assigned to the WNBA. The pipeline ensures technical competence but fuels a widespread perception: that the WNBA is treated as a stepping stone rather than a destination.
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Accountability exists, though unevenly. Officials can be fined for misapplying rules or for unprofessional interactions with team staff, but not simply for missed calls later overturned on replay. A referee who repeatedly underperforms may eventually lose their job, but more often they are passed over for coveted playoff assignments. Monty McCutchen, the WNBA’s head of officiating, insists “we hold people accountable in various ways to their body of work,” yet coaches and players remain unconvinced.
The economics underline the gap. WNBA referees are paid per game – about $1,500 for rookies and up to $2,500 for veterans – less than many earn in college basketball. By contrast, NBA referees are salaried employees earning between $150,000 and $550,000. Sue Blauch, the WNBA’s head of referee performance and development, argues that the league’s shorter season makes full-time referees unrealistic. Many WNBA officials supplement their income with college assignments, an arrangement that reinforces the sense of second-tier status.
Few believe officials are acting in bad faith; rather, many argue the system sets them up to fail. With limited resources, inconsistent training opportunities and the weight of unprecedented attention, referees are asked to manage a product that has outgrown the infrastructure around it.
The WNBA is enjoying the most explosive growth in its 29-year history. With growth comes sharper scrutiny: every mistake magnified, every missed whistle replayed millions of times. Yet in an era when women’s basketball is finally drawing casual fans and international headlines, viral officiating controversies risk overshadowing the product itself.
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All of this sets the stage for Friday night’s finals opener. On the floor will be some of the league’s biggest stars, including Phoenix’s Thomas and Las Vegas’s imperious A’ja Wilson. Millions of fans will be watching in a sold-out Michelob Ultra Arena and across the country on television. And at the middle of it all will be three referees, tasked with managing the most important games of the year under the harshest glare the league has ever faced.
If calls are crisp and games flow, the noise may fade. But if controversy flares, the finals risk being reduced to another round of outrage. For Engelbert and her leadership team, whose authority looks as fragile as ever, these games are more than a championship. They are a test of whether the WNBA can rise above the shadow of its officiating – or risk being defined by it.
