Sky guard Natasha Cloud told the Sun-Times last week she wants the next WNBA commissioner to be a former player, preferably from a minority group, who better will protect players from the hazards of mainstream attention.
Teammate Elizabeth Williams, the secretary of the players’ union, offered broader criteria: ‘‘some knowledge of the WNBA at some level’’ and ‘‘some level of business knowledge … as well.’’
Sounds reasonable enough.
The new commissioner will inherit a much stronger league than Cathy Engelbert did in 2019, but it still has a long way to go. And in part because it remains under the NBA’s control, improvements rarely come easily.
Here are five needles the commissioner will have to thread to help the league realize its potential.
1. Expansion
The WNBA will grow to 18 teams by the end of the decade, up from 12 at the beginning of it. How many more can be added without diluting the quality of play? The commissioner should have some intuition about the answer to that question and a rigorous approach to answering it fully.
The commissioner should recognize recent expansion has succeeded partly because excellent international players have helped to fill out the new rosters. The priority should be continuing to attract those players by raising salaries and staying flexible around the FIBA schedule.
2. Scheduling
Adding teams will mean more games, which will be great for fans and TV partners. But how do you add games while working within the NBA’s vision for the ‘‘W’’ as a complementary summer league? Players are wary about cramming too many games into too short a period.
The commissioner either will have to create more time out of thin air or become an agitator and persuade the NBA to let the league move to a winter schedule. NBA teams might resist sharing their arenas or TV windows, but the change would create a more sustainable calendar.
3. Officiating
The good news is that the most prominent critic of the officiating last year, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, thinks there has been progress this season. But the system is still flawed. WNBA officials train in the NBA’s developmental league before transitioning to the women’s game — an arrangement that makes little sense — and are paid far less. The commissioner will have to persuade stakeholders to pony up and fix the system.
The commissioner also will have to build more of a consensus around what kind of game everyone wants to see. Reeve and her superstar, Napheesa Collier, want a greater emphasis on freedom of movement — in other words, officiating that favors the offensive player. Cloud, on the other hand, told the Sun-Times she prefers a game that allows defenders to be more physical. And she’s not the only one.
4. Resource disparity
The gap between how the best and worst franchises operate is still pretty wacky. The Valkyries sell out all 18,000 seats for every game, while the Mystics play in what feels like a high school gym. The Mercury practice in a dedicated $100 million facility, while the Sky rotate between college gyms.
The new collective-bargaining agreement establishes minimum standards for resources, which should eliminate the truly embarrassing situations. But a commissioner also should have a vision for creating more uniformity across the board.
5. Public acceptance
The chaos surrounding the league during its ascent has shown how much difficulty the public is having accepting professional women’s basketball as big business. The commissioner will have to coach everyone through it.
Sometimes, that should be fun: storytelling and promoting a beautiful game.
Other times, it won’t be so fun: condemning threats and abuse and protecting players. Many think Engelbert fell short there, but NBC’s Jackie Powell recently reported that her reactive approach was partly in deference to league lawyers weighing the NBA’s interests.
Any commissioner must be capable of the diplomacy and shape-shifting required to keep owners and players happy. The WNBA commissioner, however, also might need the guts to defy superiors.
That is the ultimate needle the next commissioner will have to thread: leading the league through this phase of growth, even when its interests conflict with the NBA’s.