INDIANAPOLIS — It is a good time to be Napheesa Collier. It is also demanding and exhausting.
Collier, who was named MVP of the 2025 WNBA All-Star Recreation on Saturday evening after scoring a record-setting 36 factors and grabbing 9 rebounds, is the face of two leagues, considered one of which she co-founded. She has additionally emerged as a number one voice for the Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Gamers Affiliation of their historic labor battle with the league.
“She has balls,” fellow All-Star and Minnesota Lynx teammate Courtney Williams stated. “Seeing the issues that — to play basketball after which to have fixed conferences and interviews, the woman is simply, man, to see it evokes me. I be like, ‘Rattling, she be getting it in for actual.'”
What’s rapidly turning into the Yr of Phee started again in January when Unmatched, the 3-on-3 league she co-founded with New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart tipped off its inaugural season. Over the course of two months, Unmatched provided WNBA gamers a possibility to coach and play towards elite competitors through the offseason with out having to go abroad. The league additionally paid gamers a median wage of $222,000, which exceeds the WNBA’s common max wage for the 2025 season.
“Ladies’s sports activities is on such an increase, and it appears like everyone seems to be benefiting from that besides the ladies within the sport, and clearly that is one thing we’re making an attempt to vary after which additionally create generational wealth for these ladies,” Collier told CBS Sports’ “We Need to Talk” last year. “From the start, [Stewart] and I actually got down to create a league that was based on that precept that gamers deserve compensation and possession that replicate their worth.”
Collier has utilized those self same rules in her function as a vice chairman of the WNBPA. As a member of the union’s government committee, Collier has lengthy been on the forefront of the behind-the-scenes negotiations with the league on a brand new collective bargaining settlement. Over All-Star Weekend, she turned probably the most outstanding public voices in that battle. WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike referred to as Collier’s management “improbable” after the All-Star Recreation.
The gamers are what’s constructing this model and this league,” Collier stated on the podium together with her MVP trophy by her aspect. “There isn’t a league with out the gamers, and the previous, current, the brand new ones arising, they’re those which have put within the blood, sweat and tears for the brand new cash that is coming in. We really feel like we’re owed a bit of that pie that to create.”
In October 2024, the WNBPA opted out of the present CBA, which can expire on the finish of this season. Since then, little progress has been made on a brand new CBA. The league and the WNBPA met in individual this weekend for the primary time since December, however the talks solely served to frustrate the gamers.
Upon saying their intention to decide out, the gamers acknowledged that they have been in search of “transformational change.” Their two greatest calls for are greater salaries and an elevated share of income, and they’re “holding agency” on these points, Collier informed reporters Friday.
Earlier this month, the WNBA introduced three new enlargement groups — Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — which can deliver the league to 18 groups by 2030. These three franchises paid record-setting $250 million enlargement charges. Beginning subsequent 12 months, a brand new $2.2 billion media rights deal will start.
Collier and Co. need their reduce, as they re-emphasized by sporting particular warm-up shirts previous to the All-Star Recreation that learn “Pay us what you owe us.” Thanks largely to Collier’s management, the gamers have been a united entrance all through this course of. Over 40 of them attended the CBA conferences this weekend, the best price of participation in league historical past, which Collier referred to as a “actually robust message.”
WNBA All-Star Game 2025: Caitlin Clark, other stars wear ‘Pay us what you owe us’ shirts amid CBA negotiations
Jack Maloney
“She’s a pure chief,” Williams stated. “She represents all of us in a approach through which I do know that I am 100% OK together with her talking for me.”
Collier has not let her off-court duties affect her on-court manufacturing. If something, she’s been higher than ever.
Throughout Unmatched, Collier was by far the most effective participant. She put up absurd stat strains on a nightly foundation and averaged 25.7 factors, 10.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists, two steals and 1.4 blocks on 61.3% taking pictures en path to MVP honors. Her Lunar Owls went 13-1 within the common season, however have been eradicated within the semifinals regardless of a 36-point effort from Collier.
Collier’s exploits in Miami, the place the whole Unmatched season was performed, helped reinforce her standing as an MVP favourite heading into the 2025 WNBA season. Throughout a gap evening win over the Dallas Wings, Collier went for 34 factors, 4 rebounds and 4 assists, and has by no means appeared again. On the All-Star break she’s averaging a career-high 23.2 factors, 7.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.8 steals and 1.6 blocks. She’s first within the league in scoring, eighth in rebounding, fourth in steals and fourth in blocks.
With Collier main the way in which, the Lynx bought off to a 9-0 begin and are 20-4 on the break. No different staff has greater than 15 wins. After dropping the 2024 Finals in heartbreaking vogue, the Lynx have been the most effective staff this season and are the present favorites to win all of it.
Collier has spent the final seven months bouncing between boardrooms and basketball courts. Alongside the way in which she’s stacked numerous wins and lifted a number of trophies. Extra of every needs to be on the way in which, and at the very least one seems to already be within the bag. The percentages say so (-650, per Caesars), and so does Williams, who solely had one phrase to say when requested if Collier would take residence the 2025 WNBA MVP award: “Duh.”
A brand new CBA and a 2025 WNBA championship aren’t ensures, however come October it could possibly be a good higher time to be Napheesa Collier.