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WNBA Finals media day: Cathy Engelbert talks the Liberty’s rise, expansion, and more – Nets Daily
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League commissioners often take advantage of the Finals spotlight to talk about the health of their operation and Cathy Engelberg was no exception before Game 1.
All eyes were on Las Vegas as the Aces and New York Liberty began the WNBA Finals on Sunday afternoon. With the two best teams in the sport going at it, it’s a great time to be a basketball fan. This is a great moment for the game, but also a moment where we can pause and take stock of things. Luckily, there was somebody who could do that for us.
Prior to the festivities, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert gave her annual state of the league address. The Liberty’s return to the Finals for the first time since 2002 has been a huge storyline this season, and their journey to this point has been an arduous one. was Jackie Powell of The Next asked Engelbert to reflect on the team’s journey, its evolution from when they were in Westchester in 2018, and she spoke about Joe and Clara Wu Tsai’s investment in the team:
“The great news is Joe made the courageous decision to move them to the Barclays Center. They’re building a huge fan base in Brooklyn and New York,” said the commish. “I think there are some people who still think they play at Madison Square Garden, but they’re starting to build a great fan base but have come a very long way in a very short period of time because the first year they were supposed to play at Barclays was 2020 but obviously we had a season in a bubble instead, and really the second season 2021 New York had rules about no fans or 25 percent for most of our season until we came off the Olympics in Tokyo that year…
“Really proud of what they’ve done, how they’re building that fan base. I knew it would take a few years. They’ve done even better than I thought.”
She spoke as well about how Joe and Clara Wu Tsai built their superteam…
“It was important that the players got to play at Barclays and they got treated with equality from that perspective. I think they’ve done a great job and come a long way, and obviously signed free agents, three top free agents in Stewie, Jonquel [Jones] and Courtney [Vandersloot] this year to go with Betnijah [Laney], Sabrina [Ionescu], and the rest of the supporting crew, which is why they’re here in the WNBA Finals. I think it’s a great story about investing and building a roster that is going to compete for a championship.”
Engelbert’s answer reminds us of what Liberty CEO Keia Clarke discussed with NetsDaily in June of 2022. When you have ownership groups that properly invest in the team and the community they play in, good things happen. Players deserve to have support in all aspects of their jobs, whether it be through salary, amenities, the arenas they play in, etc. As Ms. Clarke said:
“As the owners of the building and as the owners of the Brooklyn Nets, they thought it important, they thought it equitable to make sure that the WNBA team in New York was calling something that was of high caliber, was of high quality, home.”
With the league officially expanding to the Bay Area, that was on the mind of the Commish and assembled media in Vegas and on Zoom. As of now, there will be 13 teams in 2025, which will need to be corrected to avoid conference imbalances among other issues. Engelbert confirmed the goal is having a 14th team in 2025 and that they’ve received formal bids, but didn’t specify the amount of bids or hint as to where the league will be moving to next. In addition to the new teams, 2025 will also be when the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and television deal will be up. It’s shaping up to be one of the most important years in league history, something not lost on Engelbert:
Again, ‘25 is an important year. After the ‘25 is when our big deal with ESPN/ABC will be up, Disney Networks. But certainly we’ve been doing a lot of work in the meantime to prepare ourselves for that, and that’s why growing the league, growing viewership, attendance, growing fan experience, digital, all of that has been so important leading into those negotiations.
There are moments in life where you have to get everything right. The margin for error is zero and any mistake you make will be costly. You can’t afford to be lax, not take things seriously, or not be fully dedicated to the job at hand. For Engelbert and the league, they have to keep building on the momentum they have right now and make sure the game continues to climb higher heights and get players the resources and money they deserve. Anything less would be an opportunity lost.
For all the Finals and expansion talk, the biggest, most important news of the week was the Dearica Hamby lawsuit against the Aces and WNBA with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hamby’s suit alleges that the Aces mistreated her while she was pregnant last year, traded her because was pregnant, tried to access her OBGYN records after she was traded, etc. She also alleged that the league did not properly investigate the claims as well. Michael Voepel of ESPN asked Engelbert to comment, and she replied:
“I am going to let the lawyers do the work first before we have any comment on whether we would do anything after that.
“As with any pending litigation in my prior life or current life, we’ll withhold any details until we see exactly what those allegations were that might have been different than what we saw when we did our investigation back in the spring.”
Here’s the video of her response…
Cathy on the Dearica Hamby lawsuit against the Aces pic.twitter.com/ASfC0mMOYb
There was discussion about the 2025 CBA as well during the presser, and policies surrounding pregnancy and the treatment of pregnant players should be at the top of the to-do list for the Players Association and the league office. You can’t have a healthy, prosperous league if players are mistreated in the ways that Hamby alleges happened to her in Las Vegas. It dims the light on the league and can create a toxic, harmful environment that can have permanent effects. After the EEOC process runs its course, it’s up to the league to ensure the players’ health and safety are protected.
The WNBA is in a great place. Ratings are up, fan interest is through the roof, and the next generation of ballers are ready to hit the league soon. There’s still plenty of room for improvement and there are critical issues that have to be addressed to ensure the health and viability of the league on and off the court. This moment is a great opportunity to celebrate the growth of the league while also acknowledging that there’s even more they can do. Now’s as good of a time as any for them to start.
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