Napheesa Collier was well-known to WNBA fans before last season, but her exit interview after the 2025 campaign made headlines across the sports world. His pointed criticism of league management and player compensation brought widespread attention to the labor battle ravaging the WBNA, as well as Collier’s proposed solution: establishing an alternative league to resolve 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.
On today’s episode of “The Athletic Show,” Collier joined the show to share details about why and how the league was created, and how the league’s structure could offer a model for improving women’s sports.
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“I had been in the WNBA for a few years at that point, and you kind of see what works and what doesn’t. You see the inconsistencies, the holes or what could be filled,” she said.
One of those holes is the WNBA’s low pay, which forces players to supplement their income by playing overseas when the league is not in season. In 2023, Collier had recently given birth to her daughter and being away from her family for extended periods of time – including vacations – got old fast. In addition to the personal consequences, playing abroad also harms players professionally by limiting their ability to sign sponsorship deals.
“Most people don’t know that we make most of our money off the field. Building a brand is crucial to our livelihood, and it’s important to be visible to those brands,” she explained. “If you go to another country for six months, they won’t sign you because they can’t use you.”
A domestic alternative would ease the pressure on players’ home lives and make off-field marketing much more viable. So Collier and Stewart began recruiting players and investors while working on the format.
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“We found 3-on-3 pretty early, even though we knew it would be a hard sell at first because it’s different. We knew we had to have the best players because that’s what people want to see. The best players in the world competing against each other,” Collier said.
But for Unrivaled to succeed, Collier knew it had to be more than an exhibition league. Player compensation had to be structured to generate investment and reward success, which is the subject of the WNBA’s long-running union battle. Women’s basketball exploded in popularity and the league was more profitable than ever. However, players have seen almost no benefit from this growth. Unrivaled had to be different if they wanted to attract the talent needed to make it work.
“When you start talking about dollars and money, that sells people. We wanted our salaries to be really competitive. We still have the highest average team salaries by far,” Collier explained.
Players earn a six-figure minimum salary, and all players who joined the league for the first season received equity in the league, meaning that as on-field performance led to league success, they reaped the rewards.
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“In sports, you don’t get a lot of fairness,” Collier said. “So the fact that they are literally invested in the sense that if the league does well they make more money, what more can you have than that?”
The WNBA was asked to purchase a stake in Unrivaled, but declined the offer.
Many observers initially viewed Collier and Stewart’s efforts as direct competition 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 fight for (in the WNBA) – salary, benefits, equity in the league – at Unrivaled we have all those things without having to ask for it. We don’t want anything here. Not only do we meet the minimum standards that we implore in the WNBA, we exceed them. The players see here what professional life should be like, so it’s really hard, once you’re given that, to accept less,” she declared. “It gives us leverage. We don’t have to take everything you give us, because if you don’t give us what we’re owed, we can go elsewhere.”
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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 on, and his plans for its future.
You can watch the full conversation on the latest episode of “The Athletic Show” on Fire TV and anywhere you want. you get your podcasts.
This article was originally published in Athletics.
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