WNBA Dissected 2023 Week 8: New competition, a new GM, and some old issues
With the WNBA days away from the midpoint of the regular season, we take another look at the interesting recent events from around the world of women's basketball
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A New Rival?
In the neverending mess that is the global women's basketball calendar, a new element entered the discussion this week. Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier announced the formation of 'Unrivaled', a women's basketball league intended to feature 30 players playing 3-on-3 and 1-on-1 on a soundstage in Miami. It doesn't sound like everything is fully formed yet - from players to investors to format - but it's another step in providing American players an opportunity to play the game and earn money in the WNBA offseason without having to join overseas teams.
Inevitably, the announcement was accompanied by more whining about the WNBA's Prioritization rules, which in all honesty I've grown tired of. It's a part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that the players agreed to and signed, while crowing about all the positive improvements in the deal. This was an integral part of the cost. That's how collective bargaining works. Superstar players like Stewart have enough clout to still go overseas and make plenty of money while stipulating when they need to leave, if that's what they want to do. I don't blame them for not liking the rules, but making it sound like they're being oppressed by them as Stewart and Gabby Williams have in recent comments has been excessive. There's a good chance they'll change in two years anyway when both sides are back at the negotiating table for the next CBA.
Anyway, back to Unrivaled. Alongside Athletes Unlimited, it sounds like players - especially established veteran stars who have tired of the international grind - could have another real opportunity to play the game in the US. As long as they attract the investors Stewart and Collier are hoping for, it could also be for real money, not just token marketing sums. I've always felt that for a lot of players, going overseas hasn't just been about maximising their income during a short playing career. It's also because the WNBA season is only four to five months long, and basketball players mostly don't want to be idle for seven to eight months of the year. This isn't the NFL where your body needs a significant period to recover from the pounding every season. Basketball players may not want to be forced to play 12 months non-stop, but over half the year training and playing pick-up just to keep yourself in shape isn't ideal either. The chance for star players to keep themselves in the public eye to some extent, make meaningful cash, and play competitive games for up to three months in the WNBA offseason could be ideal.
As with all these plans, the level of interest is going to be crucial. Investors may show up to begin with for the positive PR and intrigue at a new product, but ultimately they'll want to be involved in something that people want to watch. 3x3 has been growing ever since FIBA started taking it seriously and it joined the Olympics. There are events around the globe and the discipline is starting to develop its own stars independent of the 5-on-5 game. Collier's Twitter thread on the league said it'll "feature an innovative style of 3v3 played on a shortened full-court", which sounds a little different from 3x3, but we'll see how it looks when everything comes together. The league could end up as part of the growth of the 3-on-3 game, and even give certain players a push to be part of the Team USA squad at the Olympics.
In general, the possibilities of Unrivaled feel like they can only be positives. Athletes Unlimited has largely been a success, but without any of the genuine established stars of the women's game taking part. Rather than joining that project, players like Collier, Stewart and Chelsea Gray are trying to start something they can be involved in from the ground up, holding ownership of the enterprise as well as playing in it. If Unrivaled really takes off it could also be a kick up the backside for the WNBA, and even a negotiating tool for the players in that next collective bargaining discussion. Setting up something in the US and running it themselves, with meaningful salaries for the players, can work alongside the WNBA and its Prioritization desires to keep players at home. It might help attract players to declare for the draft rather than staying in the NCAA system for extra years as we've increasingly seen in recent seasons. But it can also be a theoretical challenger that the WNBA has to stay in front of, which might not be a bad thing for all involved. As a spectator, both the basketball and the politics could prove decidedly interesting.
Still Not a Cup
I am well aware that I have spent a lot of time in this space decrying the WNBA's execution of the Commissioner's Cup. Phrases like "it's not a cup" and "no one cares" have been fairly commonplace. Well, this week saw the NBA's announcement of their own variant of an in-season tournament and the culmination of the 'group stage' of the 2023 Commissioner's Cup - so we're going back to the well one more time.
The horrible not-really-a-group-stage section actually played out fairly well for the WNBA this year, in that it managed to produce something of a finale. The West was fairly dull, primarily due to the excellence of the Las Vegas Aces. With two of their 10 qualifying games remaining, the Aces hadn't technically reached the final, but they had nearly a 150-point advantage in cumulative point difference over Minnesota, the only remaining team who theoretically could've caught them. So the Lynx needed to beat the Aces by 60 or 70 points on Sunday to give themselves a shot. Unsurprisingly enough, that didn't happen. In the East meanwhile, we had a grandstand finish. New York and Connecticut were both at 6-3 before their final qualifying games yesterday, but the Liberty already had the tiebreaker sewn up by virtue of beating the Sun in both their direct matchups. Connecticut comfortably beat Chicago, but it didn't look like it was going to matter while New York were blowing out Indiana in a game that tipped off at exactly the same time. Then the Liberty contrived to blow an 18-point fourth-quarter lead, with the Fever forcing the game to overtime on Aliyah Boston's three at the buzzer.
For everyone but the Liberty and their fans, OT was a little anticlimactic. The Fever tired, New York pulled away, and secured their spot in the final against the Aces on August 15. For once, my disappointment with the Commissioner's Cup wasn't with the format but with how little attention was drawn to this exciting finish. If they really want people to care about this competition, take advantage and tell them why they should. We shouldn't have been able to move for features on the exciting culmination of the group stage, and explainers on how the format had worked out and led us here. The final games, ideally, should've been on national TV, or at least some kind of meaningful broadcast channel. Instead, they were in the middle of the day in front of hundreds of kids who likely had no idea of the format or implications, while most fans were stuck at work and not even able to watch. Selling the final to Amazon removed any incentive for ESPN/ABC to push the competition, but that just means the league should be working harder to do it themselves. They were handed a gift horse that the format doesn't deserve and just gazed at it quizzically.
Meanwhile, the NBA has announced their tournament and gotten more things right immediately. Firstly, there are actual knockout stages. They're having quarter- and semifinals, not just heading directly to a title game, a blindingly obvious necessary element that the WNBA has ignored. They've stated that cup games will also count as regular season games. This sounds very similar to the WNBA, but it's crucially the right way round to make people at least recognise the cup element, even if they might not care that much initially. It's cup-but-also-regular-season, not regular-season-but-also-cup. As part of that, they've set specific dates for cup games to make them stand out from the regular schedule a little. Fans will know that on Tuesdays and Fridays in November, everything is a cup game. That's admittedly harder to do in the WNBA where many teams don't own their arenas and schedules are more difficult to set, but it shows the thought and effort that has gone into the planning to make the tournament stand out. It highlights yet again where the WNBA has gone wrong with their competition. I promise I'll leave it a while before I do it again as well.
Mercury making moves
Phoenix haven't found themselves any new players to help dig themselves out of their current hole in the standings, but they did make an interesting move off the court this week. Long-time general manager Jim Pitman announced his plans to retire from the position at the end of the season, and Nick U'Ren was simultaneously named as his replacement.
U'Ren is an Arizona native and was part of the Suns and Mercury organisation in the past, so it's not a total surprise that he might want to return home. However, being able to draw someone who had been rising in the Golden State Warriors front office for several years is something of a coup. Maybe there have been promises made about the potential to work on the NBA side as well - the Suns and Mercury have always been somewhat integrated in the front office - but regardless, it's nice to see NBA executives viewing WNBA jobs as a worthwhile step.
U'Ren is most well known in NBA circles as the guy Steve Kerr credited for suggesting the Warriors switch to starting their smaller 'Death Lineup' without a true center. His previous stint in Phoenix coincided with one of the Mercury's championship runs in 2009, where Tangela Smith played at center after being a forward until she arrived in Phoenix. So there's a lineage here that makes sense on multiple levels.
He'll have a job on his hands to build the roster in the post-Taurasi era that must be coming soon, and with both Skylar Diggins-Smith and Brittney Griner as uncoreable unrestricted free agents at the end of the season. But from the outside, it certainly appears to be a quality hire. We'll see how well it plays out over the coming seasons.
Woah, we're halfway there
In a very unusual occurrence, the traditional midseason pause of the All-Star break actually falls right in the middle of the season this year. The 2023 regular season is 115 days long, and Saturday, July 15 - the date of the All-Star Game itself - is Day 58, smack bang in the middle. Beyond being an amusing coincidence, it means that there are some meaningful seasonal switches being flipped this weekend amongst the fun and frivolity of the All-Star events.
Midseason in the WNBA is the guarantee date. All unprotected salaries - so anything you can see on our cap sheets marked with a 'U' - become guaranteed for the rest of 2023. That includes both unprotected veteran salaries, and the current season of players on rookie-scale deals. Anyone waived after the midpoint would receive their full contract value for the entire 2023 season, and hit the salary cap for that full amount. The typical impact of this rule is that teams often create some wiggle room. In an effort to avoid being locked in to paying players on the end of their roster, or just to open up a spot or two to take a look at players on seven-day contracts, they make cuts before the deadline. The waiver period is reduced around the midpoint to 24 hours, so players must be waived by 5 p.m. ET on Friday, July 14 in order to clear before they become guaranteed the next day.
Sometimes the names are a little unexpected, but it's usually not hard to predict who might be released. Players like Liz Dixon in Connecticut or Victaria Saxton in Indiana have barely played, so avoiding guaranteeing their money to open up some flexibility for the rest of the season may make sense to those franchises. Another effect of the midpoint is that seven-day contracts become legal, so teams can still take short-term looks at players without locking themselves in. Or they can bring back the same players they just cut, but without the guarantees.
One final note - hardship contracts from the midpoint onwards will be signed as seven-day deals (at least until a player has completed three seven-day contracts with the same team). So you won't see those releases saying Player X has signed a 'Rest-of-Season contract' anymore when it's actually just a hardship that's likely to last two days. However, current extant hardship deals can continue as they stand, and don't become guaranteed like regular unprotected deals. So, for example, Kalani Brown can stay on Dallas's roster on the same deal she's currently on, and will still have to be released if Diamond DeShields or Lou Lopez Sénéchal returns, just as is the case right now. But anyone signed via hardship after the midpoint will likely be reported as a seven-day contract. Teams haven't changed their minds about how much they like these hardship players, the rules have just changed about the processes involved.
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