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 Sport on Saturday night time after scoring a record-setting 36 factors and grabbing 9 rebounds, is the face of two leagues, one in every of which she co-founded. She has additionally emerged as a number one voice for the Girls’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 mentioned. “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 shortly turning into the Yr of Phee started again in January when Unequalled, 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, Unequalled supplied WNBA gamers a possibility to coach and play in opposition to elite competitors in the course of 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.
“Girls’s sports activities is on such an increase, and it seems 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 alter 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 vp 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 grew to become some of the distinguished public voices in that battle. WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike referred to as Collier’s management “implausible” after the All-Star Sport.
The gamers are what’s constructing this model and this league,” Collier mentioned on the podium along with her MVP trophy by her facet. “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 chunk 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 particular person this weekend for the primary time since December, however the talks solely served to frustrate the gamers.
Upon asserting their intention to choose out, the gamers said that they have been searching for “transformational change.” Their two largest calls for are larger 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 carry the league to 18 groups by 2030. These three franchises paid record-setting $250 million enlargement charges. Beginning subsequent yr, a brand new $2.2 billion media rights deal will start.
Collier and Co. need their minimize, as they re-emphasized by carrying particular warm-up shirts previous to the All-Star Sport 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 charge of participation in league historical past, which Collier referred to as a “actually robust message.”
WNBA All-Star Sport 2025: Caitlin Clark, different stars put on ‘Pay us what you owe us’ shirts amid CBA negotiations
Jack Maloney
“She’s a pure chief,” Williams mentioned. “She represents all of us in a approach during which I do know that I am 100% OK along with her talking for me.”
Collier has not let her off-court obligations impression her on-court manufacturing. If something, she’s been higher than ever.
Throughout Unequalled, Collier was by far one of the best participant. She put up absurd stat traces 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 your complete Unequalled season was performed, helped reinforce her standing as an MVP favourite heading into the 2025 WNBA season. Throughout a gap night time 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 best way, the Lynx obtained 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 style, the Lynx have been one of the best 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 best way she’s stacked quite a lot of wins and lifted a number of trophies. Extra of every must be on the best way, and a minimum of one seems to already be within the bag. The chances 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 might be an excellent higher time to be Napheesa Collier.
