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Napheesa Collier was well-known to WNBA fans before last season, but her exit interview following the 2025 campaign made headlines across the sports world. Her pointed criticism of league leadership and player compensation brought wide-ranging attention to the labor battle gripping the WBNA, as well as to Collier’s proposed solution: establishing an alternative league to address the problem. In 2023, she and fellow women’s hoops star Breanna Stewart founded Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 league featuring the WNBA’s biggest names that plays during the league’s offseason.
In today’s episode of “The Athletic Show,” Collier joined the show to share details on why and how the league was formed, and how the league structure could offer a blueprint to improve women’s sports.
“I’d been in the WNBA a couple of years by that point, and you kind of see what’s working and what’s not. You see the inconsistencies or the holes or what could be filled,” she said.
One of those holes is the WNBA’s low pay, which forced players to supplement their income by playing overseas when the league was not in season. In 2023, Collier had recently given birth to her daughter, and being away from her family for long stretches — including holidays — got old fast. In addition to the personal toll, playing overseas also hurts players professionally by limiting their ability to sign endorsement deals.
“Most people don’t know that we make most of our money off the court. Brand building is crucial to our livelihoods, and being visible for those brands is important,” she explained. “If you’re gone in another country for six months, they aren’t going to sign you because they can’t use you.”
A domestic alternative would ease the strain on players’ family lives and make off-court marketing much more viable. So Collier and Stewart began recruiting players and investors while working on the format.
“We came up with 3-on-3 pretty early, even though we knew it was going to be a hard sell in the beginning because it’s different. We knew we had to have the best players because that is what people want to see. The best players in the world going against each other,” Collier said.
But if Unrivaled was going to succeed, Collier knew it had to be more than an exhibition league. Player compensation had to be structured to build investment and reward success, which is what the WNBA’s protracted labor battle is all about. Women’s basketball exploded in popularity, and the league was more profitable than ever. The players saw almost no benefit from that growth, however. Unrivaled had to be different if it was going to draw the talent to make it work.
“When you start talking dollars and money, that sells people. We wanted our salaries to be really competitive. We still have the highest, by far, average team salaries,” Collier explained.
Players earn a minimum six-figure salary, and any players who joined for the first season were given equity in the league, meaning that as on-court performance drove the league’s success, they reaped the rewards.
“In sports, you don’t get equity a lot,” Collier said. “So, the fact they are literally invested in the sense that if the league does well, they make more money, what more buy-in can you have than that?”
The WNBA was invited to purchase an equity stake in Unrivaled, but declined the offer.
Many observers initially viewed Collier and Stewart’s endeavor as a direct competitor to the WNBA, but Collier isn’t looking to build a rival league as much as a healthier overall ecosystem for her sport.
“Everything we are fighting for (in the WNBA) — salary, benefits, equity in the league — at Unrivaled, we have all these things without needing to ask. We want for nothing here. Not only do we meet the minimum standards that we’re begging for in the WNBA, we exceed them. Players see here what professional life should look like, so it’s really hard, once you’ve been given that, to accept less,” she said. “It gives us leverage. We don’t have to just accept anything you give us, because if you don’t give us what we’re owed, we have other places we can go.”
Watch the full episode for the extended interview, in which Collier talks about the challenges of building a league from scratch, the thrill of seeing it exceed expectations early and her plans for its future.
You can watch the full conversation on the latest episode of “The Athletic Show” on Fire TV and wherever you get your podcasts.
