In September, Napheesa Collier said the WNBA had “the worst leadership in the world,” tearing into league commissioner Cathy Engelbert amid contentious labor negotiations and frustration with officiating.
The players and owners agreed to a deal in March—and Collier is now walking back her viral comments. In an interview with NPR released Wednesday, the five-time All-Star admitted her comments may have gone overboard.
“Thinking about the state of the world, right, I think that’s a little dramatic,” Collier said.
“It was tense for a while just between the players and the league in general. I think it was something that needed to happen and it was something that furthered our CBA negotiations.”
Collier’s initial comments about Engelbert came after the Minnesota Lynx were eliminated in September. She said that part of criticism of leadership was because she understood how to lead a women’s basketball league. Collier co-founded Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league that launched last year.
“We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world,” Collier said last fall. “If I didn’t know exactly what the job entailed, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way, but unfortunately for them, I do. We serve a league that has shown they think championship coaches and Hall of Fame players are dispensable and that’s fine. It’s professional sports, but I will not stand quietly by and allow different standards to be applied at the league level.”
Collier said that she’s still “happy” with her decision to call out WNBA leadership, but she isn’t pleased with how her statements may have impacted Engelbert personally. Engelbert said was “disheartened” by Collier’s comments.
“I never want someone’s personal life the way that it was for her,” Collier said. “She got a lot of backlash for that. And what I was talking about was professionally. When you take things personally, that was an unintended consequence for sure.”
Collier said that she has not spoken to Engelbert about the comments she made last year, but that the two did speak during marathon CBA negotiations in March.
At the WNBA finals last fall, Engelbert essentially accused Collier of lying, saying she “certainly did not say” comments Collier recounted about Caitlin Clark.
At the WNBA draft last month, Engelbert was asked about her future as commissioner. The former Deloitte CEO pushed back aggressively and suggested the question—asked by a woman—was sexist.
“I do crack up how everybody’s focused on me, and you should be focused on the hundreds of amazing women, and thousands of women who run this league outside of myself … I wonder whether you would ask that of a man, by the way, but I realize as women we get asked different questions than men do,” Engelbert said.
