What to know about Unrivaled women’s basketball league as its second season tips off

Unrivaled will begin its second season Monday afternoon, but it will be without one of its star cofounders on the floor.

Lunar Owls forward Napheesa Collier, an All-Star with the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA, was ruled out for the season due to multiple ankle injuries that require surgery. It is a blow for Collier’s team, but the professional 3×3 league is hopeful that it has more than enough star power to flourish.

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As women’s basketball is filled with tension amid ongoing negotiations over the WNBA collective bargaining agreement and a potential future offseason competitor league in Project B, Unrivaled boasts a lineup of 54 players, more than three-quarters of whom are signed to multi-year deals. (The league, which claimed to pay the highest salaries in American women’s team sports in its inaugural season, raised capital from a group of investors at a $340 million valuation this fall.) It will feature more than a dozen first-time players this season, including Los Angeles Sparks guard Kelsey Plum, Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell and Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers.

“Excitement across the board is really, really high,” Unrivaled executive vice president and general manager Clare Duwelius said. “The players who we were able to add heading into Season 2 are super exciting names to me. Knowing how we had amazing success in Year 1 and just seeing how it can really come to life in Year 2 is probably what I’m most excited about, eager about.”

Here’s everything you need to know before Monday’s tipoff:

Year 2 growth and changes

The WNBA is not the only professional women’s basketball league in a period of expansion. In September, Unrivaled announced two new teams and 18 new roster spots, unveiling Hive Basketball Club and Breeze Basketball Club to bring its total to eight teams. A season-long development pool of six players, who are not assigned to a specific team at the start of the season but are present on-site and serve as injury-relief players, is another change this season.

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League president Alex Bazzell, who is Collier’s husband, said the league had initially thought it would expand after a third season, but that it could grow this season because it was “so far ahead of schedule.” Bueckers headlines Breeze, which is coached by former Seattle Storm coach Noelle Quinn. Mitchell was selected first by Hive, which is coached by Chicago Sky assistant Rena Wakama.

Additional medical and training resources were also added, and each team now has a dedicated athletic trainer as well as its own player development coach.

“They changed the athletic training room so it’s a lot bigger, especially to accommodate all these players. I love it. They changed the players’ lounge — it’s bigger and in a different area,” said Arike Ogunbowale, who will play on Mist in her second Unrivaled season. “I think you can feel a sense of ‘leveled up-ness,’ like this is Year 2; we’re better than Year 1, and Year 1 was already good.”

With more players, the league took over another studio lot on its Medley, Fla., property, allowing for a third practice court, a training room that’s more than double the size of the original, and a second weight room. Its arena will also feature 25 percent more seats.

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“This is a league by players, for players. Player feedback is the number one thing that informs changes,” Collier said. “What do the players want? Do you like the format? What do you like? What do you not? What things do you want different in Year 2? What do you see for the future? Taking a lot of feedback in that way is how we make decisions.”

As part of the expansion, the league added a fourth night of games and eliminated back-to-back game days. Contests will be played on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, and games will air on TNT, truTV and HBO Max.

How were rosters created?

As a result of the expansion, the league overhauled its rosters. Before its draft, 48 non-developmental players were divided into six groups, and every club was required to select a player from each group. Playoff teams from 2025 could keep two players from last year, and non-playoff teams could retain one. Players who were protected, and thus exempt from the draft, were: Collier (Lunar Owls), Kahleah Copper (Rose), Skylar Diggins (Lunar Owls), Chelsea Gray (Rose), Dearica Hamby (Vinyl), Rhyne Howard (Vinyl), Satou Sabally (Phantom), Breanna Stewart (Mist), Alyssa Thomas (Laces) and Jackie Young (Laces).

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Breeze and Hive had the first and second draft picks, and Bueckers went first to the expansion club.

The defending champion Rose returns the highest percentage of its players, bringing back four of its six players from 2025. Gray, Copper, Azurá Stevens and Lexie Hull will again play under coach Nola Henry.

Breeze

Hive

Laces

Lunar Owls

* Fágbénlé is serving as an injury replacement for Collier.

Mist

Phantom

* Sabally is out indefinitely as she recovers from a concussion she suffered in the 2025 WNBA Finals. Hayes was added as an injury replacement.

Rose

Vinyl

Developmental players

Who isn’t participating? Who’s new?

Several WNBA All-Stars who participated in the inaugural season decided not to join Unrivaled this season. Jewell Loyd, Kayla McBride, Angel Reese and Sabrina Ionescu won’t return. A’ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark again decided not to play for the league.

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Dominique Malonga, the No. 2 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft behind Bueckers, also will compete in Unrivaled for the first time. Cameron Brink, the No. 2 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, missed Unrivaled’s first season due to injury but will play this season. Mitchell, Alanna Smith, Veronica Burton, Sonia Citron and Ezi Magbegor are other notable newcomers.

Philadelphia tour stop added

During its inaugural season, the league played its entire 10-week schedule (including its one-on-one tournament week and postseason) outside of Miami on a converted TV studio lot. Unrivaled’s footprint will be different this winter, as the league begins 12 days earlier than last season. It will conclude March 4, two weeks earlier in March than it did in 2025.

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The season will remain eight weeks long, but Unrivaled will also feature a weekend of competition outside of Florida for the first time. Breeze, Phantom, Rose and the Lunar Owls will compete in back-to-back matchups on Jan. 30 at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena, home of the NBA’s 76ers and NHL’s Flyers.

Coaches to watch

Seven of Unrivaled’s eight head coaches have WNBA coaching experience. Quinn, who parted ways with the Storm after nearly five seasons, headlines the four new head coaches. She is joined by Wakama, a Sky assistant, who is leading Hive; Zach O’Brien, a Sparks assistant, who is coaching Mist; and Roneeka Hodges, a Connecticut Sun assistant, who is coaching Phantom.

How does Unrivaled fit into the women’s basketball landscape?

For decades, women’s basketball players resorted to playing overseas during the WNBA offseason to supplement their earnings. Unrivaled was founded as a means to shakeup that paradigm, paying top WNBA players record-breaking salaries and providing them with equity in the league, all while keeping them home during the offseason and giving them a place to develop.

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The league aims to build on its debut season even as the sport’s landscape appears to be growing more crowded. Project B, a new startup league founded by former Facebook executive Grady Burnett and Skype’s Geoff Prentice, announced it had signed WNBA All-Star Nneka Ogwumike, sparking a wave of player announcements. The league said it will begin in November. Like Unrivaled, Project B says it is offering higher salaries than the WNBA, along with equity stakes in the league. However, the league has said it will feature six teams of 11 players, utilize a more traditional five-on-five format, and see players compete in seven two-week tournaments across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Even with multiple current Unrivaled players announced as part of Project B’s debut roster, Stewart does not seem overly concerned about the impact on Unrivaled, which she cofounded with Collier.

“Project B has a lot that’s still in the works until they’re on the ground and running,” she said. “Salaries, comparatively speaking, are similar. It depends on what you want to do, travel all over or stay here in one place for 10 weeks.”

How does Unrivaled’s play compare to the WNBA?

Unrivaled uses a modified 3×3 court that is 72 feet long by 49.2 feet wide. That’s more than 20 feet shorter than a regulation WNBA court (and slightly narrower). The first three quarters of games are seven minutes — not 10, as in the WNBA — and the fourth quarter is untimed. Teams end the game by playing to a target “winning score,” which is determined by adding 11 points to the leading team’s total after the third quarter. As a result, there is no overtime.

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Other notable differences include shorter possessions (18-second shot clocks instead of 24) and only one free throw whether a player is fouled on a 2- or 3-point attempt. (The single free throw will be the value of the attempt.)

Who are the favorites?

Rose has to be considered a contender to win Unrivaled’s 2026 championship, considering the club won last year’s inaugural title and will return two-thirds of its roster. Laces won their first four games last season and looked like a front-runner until injuries impacted their lineup. Led again by Thomas and Young, they should be formidable.

Mist, led by Stewart, looks to make the playoffs after a disappointing 5-9 inaugural season, but they might have the most talented roster this season. Stewart is joined by first-team All-WNBA guard Allisha Gray, 2025 WNBA co-Defensive Player of the Year Smith, WNBA All-Defense guard Burton, 6-foot-7 center Li Yueru and four-time All-Star Ogunbowale. Although O’Brien is new to the league, he has coached Stewart for the last four WNBA seasons, so their familiarity will likely help the team’s connection.

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Title prediction: Mist

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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