When a Black woman made the local sports front page’s top fold and pushed the local men’s teams off to the side, it was indeed huge, big-time news. Same for its domination on male-dominated sports media’s news cycle for a couple of days.
Before this year’s WNBA Finals last week, a classic she-said, she-said occurred, first in downtown Minneapolis and then continuing in Vegas, between one of the league’s most respected stars vs. the now-embattled league commissioner.
Napheesa Collier’s nearly-five minute prepared statement during her Minnesota Lynx exit interview last Tuesday strongly criticized WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert as she brought to light the Commish’s insensitivity toward players in earlier conversations this year between herself and Engelbert. She characterized Engelbert as dismissive, impersonable, condescending and callous, and called the commissioner and the WNBA’s front office “the worst leadership in the world.”
“I’ve finally grown tired,” Collier strongly pointed out. “For too long I’ve tried to have these conversations in private, but it’s clear there is no intention of accepting there’s a problem.”
Said Engelbert through a league release, “I am disheartened by how Napheesa characterized our conversations and league leadership.”
Then, before Game 1 last Friday during Engelbert’s scheduled Finals press conference, the W Commish said that there were “inaccuracies.”
“It’s obviously been a tough week,” stressed Engelbert, adding that she did not disparage Indiana’s Caitlin Clark and others as Collier earlier said. “Obviously, I did not make those comments. As I said, there’s a lot of inaccuracies reported out there, and I certainly did not say that.”
Who do we believe, Collier or Engelbert? Dozens of players have expressed their support of the former, while the latter’s “non-denial denial” (a term borrowed from “All The President’s Men”) did nothing to remove her from shaky ground status, a speculated soon-to-be lame duck status with virtually everyone. Many on social media are calling for Engelbert to step down.
Veteran journalist Amber D. Dodd said of last week’s events, “I think this was a very, very, very distinctive moment in the league. I think there’s no one else who could have had a better say, a better statement to write… She was the only one who would be able to put this together and frame it that way, in such a beautiful, graceful, but very seething and very just, just very firm way.
“It took off the mask that Cathy is trying to build in the league when she’s really power hungry,” continued Dodd, who once covered the WNBA for several years and since December 2024 has been the web producer and content manager for The National LGBTQ Task Force in Washington, D.C.
On Engelbert, the commissioner since 2019 of America’s only pro league where its majority of players are Black, “She’s a business woman,” said Dodd. “She knows how to make revenue. Cathy’s leadership is again replicating this idea that these players are lucrative for their bodies and not their talents.
“[Collier’s] four-minute statement was really about Cathy’s lack of integrity in her leadership, how she lacks integrity in her demeanor, how she lacks honesty in her interactions with not only the league but the players within the league,” said Dodd.
With the Oct. 31 deadline before the current CBA expires, a work stoppage seems very real despite Engelbert’s assurances: “I feel confident we are going to get a deal done,” promised the Commish.
Concluded Dodd, “Everything’s just coming to a head because it’s the combo of issues,” such as inadequate player treatment, inconsistent officiating, and persistent racism.
Amber D. Dodd has more to say on how WNBA Black players are being treated and will be revisited in a future MSR edition.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.