MIAMI — On the eve of the WNBA collective bargaining agreement deadline, Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association vice president Breanna Stewart on Thursday said there won’t be a third extension as each side plans to continue negotiating.
“We’re not coming to an agreement by tomorrow, I can tell you that,” Stewart said after Unrivaled’s Mist practice. “We’re just gonna continue to negotiate in good faith.”
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The WNBA and Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association remain at an impasse more than 14 months since players initially opted out of the current CBA, with salary and revenue sharing structure and player benefits being some of the overarching sticking points.
Some players at Unrivaled expressed frustration — but not surprise — at the state of negotiations this week.
“Not good, not bad,” Rose guard Chelsea Gray said. “Not as good as we hoped at this point.”
“It’s a battle,” Laces forward Alyssa Thomas added. “It’s a lot of work to be done.”
Breanna Stewart playing for the Mist in the Unrivaled league on Jan. 5, 2026. Getty Images
Asked about her confidence heading into Friday night’s CBA deadline, Phantom guard and WNBPA first vice president Kelsey Plum briefly paused before letting out a titter.
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Sources confirmed that neither the WNBA nor the players’ union offered an extension to the current CBA, which is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. Friday.
Stewart said people shouldn’t hold their breath for that to happen.
“I have never been told that we’re having an extension,” the Liberty star said. “Literally, what I have been told is that we will continue to negotiate in good faith and not have an extension.”
Once the clock strikes midnight Friday, the league will enter a period of status quo, or operate business as usual, while the sides continue to hash out a new deal.
In the meantime, though, a potential work stoppage remains on the table.
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The WNBA is not considering a league-initiated lockout, sources told The Post, but players have been bracing for a potential work stoppage since negotiations began.
In mid-December, the WNBPA authorized its executive committee to call for a strike “when necessary.”
The union said 93 percent of players participated in the vote, and 98 percent of them voted “yes.”
Stewart said the strike authorization vote showed that the union remains “all on the same page.”
“We all are understanding where we’re at,” Stewart said. “It’s not something that we’re going to do right this second, but being able to have that in our back pocket and, like, listen, we want to negotiate. We want to be able to continue, like, hopefully there’ll be a point where we can have meetings down here because obviously we can’t go to New York because we’re playing, but let’s see how many people we can get in Miami and meet.”
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. AP
Players have expressed frustration with what they perceived as a lack of urgency from the league to get a deal done.
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WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson said in May she hoped to have “significant progress” made toward a new deal by the 2025 WNBA All-Star break. But that didn’t happen.
More than 40 players showed up to an Indianapolis hotel during the mid-July event to meet with commissioner Cathy Engelbert and other league officials only to walk away dissatisfied.
Little progress appears to have been made in the months since.
Stewart said it’s “definitely frustrating” to enter the second week of January without a deal.
“For me, the most frustrating part is we all didn’t do our best in the beginning… because we were just kind of wasting time when we actually could have been having meetings and we were in person and we had that big one in W All-Star, like, that was a moment to really talk about the details of things,” Stewart said. “So because we’ve really not been productive in many in-person meetings and I feel like from my perspective that’s where I would like to feel comfortable… to find a common ground, but we just haven’t. So that’s what’s frustrating is, like, the wasted opportunities.”
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Both sides agree that player compensation should drastically increase in the next CBA, but each party has different ideas for the salary system.
The latest proposal from the WNBA includes a maximum base salary starting at $1 million that’s projected to rise to $1.3 million with the league and team revenue sharing component included, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.
The average salaries in the first year are projected to be more than $530,000, and the minimum salary to be more than $250,000 in the first year, sources said.
The WNBA is offering players 70 percent of the net revenue share, which equates to roughly 15 percent of gross league and team revenue, sources said. But players are seeking roughly 30 percent of gross revenue.
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People on both sides remain optimistic that a deal will be completed so as to not delay the 2026 season, though a condensed offseason — that includes a two-team expansion draft, a massive free agency bonanza and college draft — seems more and more likely as each day passes.
“What needs to happen [is we] just gotta get players, owners, like, everybody in the same room,” Stewart said. “Obviously you have the PA side and you have the W side, but also you want the [labor relations committee] and the [executive committee] — those people having these conversations, because sometimes it gets a little bit too finicky about wording and this and that and it’s like, while we both are, like, seems like we’re very far apart, there is a place where we can come and find a mutual ground there has to be.”
