The countdown continues to Oct. 31, when the WNBA's collective bargaining agreement expires. Time is running out for the league and the Players' Association to reach a deal on a new one -- though commissioner Cathy Engelbert has indicated that an temporary extension is a possibility if the two sides are near an agreement, the players are fully backing Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier as she continues to torch Engelbert's leadership of The W.
Last Friday, Engelbert told reporters before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals that she had been in contact with Collier, the MVP runner-up and one of the star players of her league. The two were set to meet this week -- but after Engelbert said Collier's explosive statement about league leadership was "riddled with inaccuracies," Collier canceled the meeting and left Engelbert's leverage in negotiations hanging by a thread.
MORE: WNBA execs hammer Napheesa Collier for alleged conflict of interest amid Cathy Engelbert feud
Collier on Monday dealt a further blow to Engelbert's future prospects as a strong commissioner of a rapidly-growing league. In Los Angeles at the Unreasonable Conversation conference, Collier told former vice president Kamala Harris that Engelbert continued to demonstrate a "lack of accountability" in Friday's pre-finals presser.
"For her to start her speech saying she has the utmost respect for me and for the players, and then to turn around and call me a liar three minutes later ... denying words that I heard come straight out of her mouth ... I think she encapsulated what I was talking about in my statement," Collier said.
Napheesa Collier explains why she wrote the statement criticizing WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert in a conversation with former VP Kamala Harris at #UnreasonableConversation in LA. pic.twitter.com/o2BOXHZmUU
— maxwell millington (@mxwzy) October 7, 2025
While NBA commissioner Adam Silver has practically guaranteed that a new CBA will get done in the weeks ahead, he acknowledged that Engelbert has a lot of work to do to repair trust around the league. It may well be a lost cause with Collier, who told Harris that her statement at her Lynx exit interview had been a long time in the making.
"I saw nothing was changing. Coaches and players were complaining about the same things over and over again. We weren’t seeing a change," the former Defensive Player of the Year said. "Whether I was going to get annihilated for this, or people were going to support me, I felt what I was doing was right. I felt like it needed to be said.”
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