The Longest WNBA Season Is Already Getting Bumpy

The 2025 WNBA season is bigger and better than ever before. 

There are more national broadcasts, TV viewers, and sold-out crowds. But the growth has not come without pain. Nearly a month into the season, the increased 44-game schedule has drawn heavy criticism from players, some of whom have called out commissioner Cathy Engelbert directly. 

“If Cathy [Engelbert] keeps adding more games in this short stint of time, the injuries are going to continue to go up,” Liberty guard Natasha Cloud said following practice Monday. “When you talk about a big business and the overall protection of your investment, we are the investment as players. Your job is to protect us.” 

Over the last five seasons the WNBA schedule has steadily increased, from 32 games in 2021 to 40 in 2023 to 44 this year, the maximum amount permitted under the current collective bargaining agreement. 

Though players agreed to the CBA, they have been displeased with playing more games in roughly the same number of days. May and June have been a gauntlet for teams like the Liberty who are fresh off a five-game schedule—including one back-to-back—in a nine day span. The Phoenix Mercury, too, have had a grueling start to the season, playing a nine-game slate in 18 days. 

In the players’ minds, the fix is simple. 

“Cathy needs to extend the season,” Cloud said. 

Mercury forward Satou Sabally was another player to share criticism of Engelbert. 

“I think this is a conversation that could also be important for the next CBA. Cathy [Engelbert] added a lot of games, and [for] us as players, recovery is so important. We put our bodies on the line every single time. We had nine games in 18 days. That’s not really responsible for a commissioner,” Sabally said.

The 2023 40-game regular season—played without any major international competitions requiring a break like the Olympics—was played in a 114-day timespan. By comparison, the 2025 regular season will last 118 days. With each team playing four more games but having just four more days to schedule them, that means less rest. 

The Liberty will play the most back-to-backs of any team this season, with two more scheduled.  

A number of league stars have sustained injuries, including Fever guard Caitlin Clark—who has missed five games with a quad strain—and Sky guard Courtney Vandersloot, who tore her ACL in her team’s loss to the Fever last week. 

There has been no increase in the injury rate compared to last year, the league says. The league office did not answer a question about whether it had consulted with medical or training staff about this year’s schedule.

Experts emphasize the only real way to prevent injury is with proper recovery time. 

“Think about it like a NASCAR going around a track,” Dr. Samuel Ward, co-director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at UC San Diego, told Front Office Sports. “You didn’t pit and there wasn’t adequate service in between races. At some point you’re going to throw a valve and the engine is going to blow up. It’s not because at the start of the race you could have predicted it. Things start to wear out, they move differently and all of a sudden something breaks.” 

(Ward’s Human Performance Alliance was launched by funding from Liberty owner Clara Wu Tsai in 2021.)

When the league was founded in 1997, NBA commissioner David Stern was adamant that it would be a summer league so as to not compete with the NBA schedule. 

That first season began on June 21 and concluded with the Houston Comets winning the league’s inaugural title on Aug. 30. Today, the WNBA crosses over with the NBA, MLB, and NHL in May. The last possible finals date, according to the WNBA, is Oct. 19, which puts the WNBA up against the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL. 

Last July, the WNBA secured an 11-year media-rights deal valued at $200 million per year, with rights spread among NBC, ESPN, and Amazon Prime Video. Those companies also hold rights in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and college sports, which could complicate the league pushing any deeper into the fall.

“I know on both ends between April and October there’s things happening,” Liberty forward and WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart said. “But I think that’s one of the biggest talking points in the next CBA is how can we make it so teams aren’t playing four [games] in six [days] three times in a season and continuing to have that rest and recovery so we are at our best.” 

Stewart added that players want to continue to see the league grow and are understanding of the complications presented with scheduling, but their priority is to have a more balanced regular-season schedule.

“Everybody’s schedule is tough,” Stewart said. “It gets difficult at times, but we just want to be able to have it make a little bit more sense, because we have these stretches where it’s three and four days and then we have one in seven.”