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CHICAGO — The future of Cathy Engelbert is a hot topic at WNBA All-Star Weekend, but WNBA players’ union president Nneka Ogwumike is keeping a neutral stance.
At the WNBA All-Star Game practices Friday, Ogwumike did not provide a definitive answer on whether she felt Engelbert should stay on as commissioner when asked by Front Office Sports.
“It’s not on me to decide,” Ogwumike said.
The 11-time All-Star, who has been union president since 2016, said she will work with whomever is across the table from her, and expressed that to Engelbert at a meeting earlier this week.
“For players, when leadership is here, we rock with leadership. Cathy is here. I know there’s a lot of different conversations around the future of our leadership. But I told her that on Monday: This is who we got, this is what we all envision that we want us to be, and we’re going to rock with who we got.”
Breanna Stewart, a WNBPA vice president, gave a similarly ambiguous response, but was also complimentary of Engelbert’s role in helping the league reach a historic collective bargaining agreement after a contentious winter.
“I don’t know,” Stewart said of Engelbert’s future. “I think that Cathy has done a lot to really get us to this point, obviously. She was across the table during those CBA negotiations and eventually we got to a historic deal. I think there’s flowers that need to be given all around in order for this deal to really happen. But I don’t know. It’s not my place to say if she should be here or she should not.”
Stewart also recognized that Engelbert has “learned a lot” since the start of her tenure.
“From when she started to now, I think she’s more open and more personable. And maybe that just comes with the comfort of your surroundings and your work environment and things like that. But that’s something that she can always improve on.”
The WNBA has continued to grow its business this season, including record attendance and viewership numbers. But Engelbert has faced significant criticism from players over the years; this season, it’s been issues around player security and officiating. Multiple reports have indicated that executives and players are, again, questioning whether Engelbert is fit to lead the league into its next era.
Players have been unhappy with Engelbert for years; Napheesa Collier famously said last year that the league had “the worst leadership in the world,” although she recently said that was merely an aggressive stance for leverage in labor talks.
Much of the narrative around the WNBA in recent weeks has been centered around officiating and player safety following the backlash to an on-court incident in late June when Alyssa Thomas struck Caitlin Clark in the throat.
Thomas was retroactively given a Flagrant 2 and one-game suspension for what the league deemed as a “non-basketball act.” But the Phoenix Mercury star said she received death threats following the incident.
Union secretary Elizabeth Williams told reporters Wednesday that the players expressed to the league that they felt Thomas would not have received as much public vitriol of the foul was called in the moment.
Weeks later, Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray posted on social media that she was called a racial slur by an apparent sports bettor.
Engelbert’s autonomy is also in question after Sports Business Journal reported that NBA commissioner Adam Silver pushed Engelbert to suspend Thomas following the incident with Clark. The NBA owns 42% of the WNBA.
The WNBA denied the report, calling it “absolutely false,” but Silver refused to answer when asked last week if he had a hand in the decision.
“I’m not going to comment on that, because I don’t think it’s fair to Caitlin and to Cathy Engelbert either. That’s not the real issue here,” Silver said.
Silver has been asked multiple times about the future of Engelbert, most recently during a press conference at NBA Summer League earlier this month. He has yet to provide a definitive answer on her future, but praised the work Engelbert has done in growing the WNBA.
“Cathy continues to do a strong job building that league and we’ll have ongoing discussions,” Silver said.
Engelbert is scheduled to address the media in a press conference Saturday evening ahead of the All-Star Game.
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