A challenging day for WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert ended with the league being forced to say she has no plans to resign from her post this offseason.
Hours after Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier went scorched earth on Engelbert and received no shortage of people agreeing with her, Sports Business Journal published a report claiming Engelbert would “likely exit as commissioner sometime after the current CBA negotiations due to pressure inside NBA and WNBA circles.”
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The WNBA’s CBA expires at the end of this season, so such an exit would mean this would be Engelbert’s final season as commissioner. One of SBJ’s sources did not paint her current situation in a good light:
“She hasn’t connected; she’s not a relationship builder, which you have to be in that job with the teams, with the players,” a source familiar with league office dynamics said last month. “I think she’s a wicked smart business person, and the success she gets a lot of credit for. But a commissioner has to have a personality element that can touch every constituent that they have. I think she’s just lacking in it.
“You’re where you are now, you have got to get through this labor negotiation. After that, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did a victory lap and rode off back into the corporate world somewhere.”
In response, a WNBA spokesperson told SBJ that the source’s comments “categorically false,” with no further statement from Engelbert.
Engelbert has been WNBA commissioner since 2019, joining the league after a tenure as CEO of Deloitte.
Cathy Engelbert is none too popular in the WNBA at the moment. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
(Michael Hickey via Getty Images)
The current flurry of criticism aimed at Engelbert can be traced back to Game 3 of the Minnesota Lynx’s semifinal series against the Phoenix Mercury. A no-call involving some hard contact with Collier led to an injury and an apoplectic response from Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, who blasted the league’s officiating in her postgame comments and received a one-game suspension for her response.
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On Tuesday, Collier took the podium for her end-of-season news conference and made Reeve’s comments look gentle by comparison. She criticized not only the WNBA’s officiating, but took direct shots at Engelbert’s leadership and claimed the commissioner said, among other things, “Players should be on their knees thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.”
Given that a) Collier is a vice president on the WNBPA’s executive committee and b) the league and union have made seemingly little progress on a CBA they need to have a season next year, those comments rang even louder than a player blasting a commissioner usually does.
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Engelbert released a statement saying she was “disheartened” by how Collier characterized their conversations, but the torrent of players supporting Collier and coaches supporting Reeve — like Stephanie White and Becky Hammon — is a sign of where things are now in a league with some negotiating to do.
