MINNEAPOLIS — NAPHEESA COLLIER is deep in negotiations, and her opponent doesn’t want to budge. The Minnesota Lynx forward knows the deadline is looming. She has one more bargaining chip to play.
She holds out a tendril of string cheese.
Collier’s 3-year-old daughter, Mila, is on the other side of the standoff — plopped down in the middle of their apartment, unwilling to put on her sneakers. A consensus for her outfit came easily. But the shoes require a better deal.
Mila eyes the offer. After a long pause — the kind of toddler silence that means power is shifting — she takes the cheese. The shoes go on, and they file into Collier’s black Range Rover.
Inside the car, the opening bars of the “Mulan” soundtrack start to play. Mila is singing before they’ve left the garage. Collier hums along — for a moment — before the playlist pivots to something a little more her speed. From the backseat, Mila objects loudly.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
“We’re working on sharing,” Collier says, smiling.
And so begins Collier’s daily toggle between her many roles: mother to Mila, franchise player for the Lynx, vice president of the WNBA Players Association, and co-founder of Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 league she’s building with Breanna Stewart.
This summer, as Collier attempts to lead the Lynx back to the WNBA Finals — this time as the league MVP favorite — she’s also helping to lead the most important contract negotiations in the league’s history. The current collective bargaining agreement, which the players opted out of in October, expires at the end of the season. The conversations are high stakes and layered. But as the two sides push toward a new deal, one thing is clear: Players have more leverage than ever before.
Part of that comes from the league Collier helped create, one that’s designed to give players more money, more control and more choice. Unrivaled changes the dynamics, giving the league’s biggest stars a high-paying alternative on U.S. soil for the first time.
“Even though we’re not competing leagues, we can always say, ‘Look how much Unrivaled is paying us,'” Collier said. “That should allow us to make more money in the W. I feel like it gives us a leg up because it gives us players more power. There is more than one league we can play in, and we all want to play in the WNBA.”
Collier wants both leagues to thrive. But like most negotiations, it’s complicated. And Collier — ever calm and steady — is right in the middle of it.
“I’m still navigating it,” Collier told ESPN last week over lunch after she dropped off Mila at school and completed a three-hour morning practice session with the Lynx. “I understand you are never going to please everyone. … It’s just figuring out [how] to compartmentalize everything, honestly.
“You just take it as it comes. And the thing is, you don’t really have a choice but to figure it out.”
Life on and off the court is a constant juggle for Napheesa Collier, but delivering a WNBA title to Minnesota is one of the things at the top of her list. Emily Johnson for ESPN
FOR EVERYTHING AT which Collier excels, there is one thing those closest to her acknowledge she just can’t do: talk trash.
Before every game, the Lynx huddle around one another before heading down the tunnel to the court. As they break their circle, they turn to Collier — their franchise player — to fire them up. But Collier’s words of motivation are too often edited to the preschool audience she has at home, the kind of clean-cut verbiage that goes with toddler sing-a-longs, substituting “darn it” for its adult counterpart. Or perhaps Collier is just too nice.
“She be talking s—, but it just ain’t good. Hell no. But we’re working on it,” Lynx teammate Courtney Williams told ESPN.
Make no mistake, though: Even when they’re subtle, Collier has her fiery moments.
Even as some question whether it’s a conflict of interest for one of Unrivaled’s co-founders to serve on the WNBA Players Association executive council, Collier wore an Unrivaled T-shirt during the nationally televised WNBA All-Star roster draft. Every time she selected a former Unrivaled Lunar Owls teammate, Collier let out the “hootie-hoo” battle cry the team popularized during the league’s two-month season in the winter.
“I thought it was a great opportunity to represent something I was passionate about,” Collier said, a cheeky grin spreading across her face.
Making loud statements without making a lot of noise is textbook Collier, Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said.
“Having an edge is a must. If you don’t have an edge you can’t reach your greatest heights,” Reeve told ESPN. “Sometimes it’s hard for Phee, but she does it in her own graceful way.”
That edge has Collier leading the WNBA in scoring and shooting percentage as the front-runner for MVP. Off the court, it’s why her colleagues want her involved in the CBA negotiations. And it helped her build a professional league from scratch — and revolutionize how players are paid.
TOP: Fans at the WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis made clear their support of the players as talks continue for a new collective bargaining agreement. BOTTOM: Collier, center, can’t help but smile after her squad beat Team Clark and she won MVP honors. Getty Images
Players in the WNBA have been outspoken about needing increased salaries — the current maximum contract for a player is around $250,000 — and a revenue sharing system. Unrivaled already offers both, paying its 36 players an average salary of $220,000 and giving equity to players who participated in the inaugural season.
“Whether it’s Phee or me or someone else at Unrivaled, we understand that’s the standard now,” Stewart said. “That’s what we expect when we come back to the W.”
But during All-Star Weekend, over 40 players gathered in Indianapolis to take part in the first face-to-face meeting between the union and league officials since December. Stewart described it as a “wasted opportunity” as no progress was made. At the heart of negotiations, as ESPN reported last week, the players want a system that allows them to earn a greater percentage of the league’s revenue. The WNBA has a new media rights deal with ESPN, Amazon and NBA worth $200 million for 11 seasons, and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that TV viewership is up 23%, attendance is up 26% and merchandise sales are up 40%.
“We feel we are owed a piece of the pie that we helped create,” Collier said before the All-Star Game.
The players made a clear, unified statement in Indianapolis, wearing warmup shirts that said “Pay Us What You Owe Us” before the All-Star Game tipped. Fans had their own signs that read “Pay The Players,” and as Engelbert presented Collier the MVP trophy following her team’s All-Star win, chants of “pay them” rained down from the stands.
“That gave me chills,” Collier said. “It really showed us that the fans are behind us and they understand what we are fighting for.”
But she also made it clear that she wants the WNBA to succeed.
“I am also employed by the W, so if I’m working against the W, I’m taking away money from myself,” Collier said. “Of course, I want us to get paid as much money from the W as we can because I am playing in it.”
Her Unrivaled partner made it clear that their league isn’t meant to threaten the WNBA, but rather to serve as a challenge to raise its standards.
“We just want to be on a page where we can work together and make all things happen fluidly,” Stewart said, “because I don’t think that lifting up one league should tear down another.”
Breanna Stewart, left, and Napheesa Collier are rivals on the court but partners in serving as founders of Unrivaled. AP Photo/Pamela Smith
COLLIER DIDN’T WANT to touch a basketball after the Lynx’s 2024 WNBA Finals loss. The series went the distance, with New York winning Game 5 in overtime. The Lynx were devastated by the outcome and angry with the officiating.
“I was just over it,” Collier said.
But Unrivaled would tip off in just two months, and with so much riding on the success of the startup league, Collier knew she had to be at her best. So she took off only one week from training, returning three weeks earlier than usual.
She wasn’t ready to shoot yet, so she hit the weight room for several hours each day for a month and a half. Collier focused on lifting heavy, trying to bulk up more than she does during the WNBA season.
Once she arrived in Miami — where Unrivaled is played — in December, she picked up a ball and started working on her skills. Collier wanted to work on her ballhandling and 3-point shooting, and Reeve set a goal for Collier to become a 50-40-90 player — the rare accomplishment of shooting 50% from the field, 40% from 3-point range and 90% at the foul line.
Collier dominated the 3-on-3 league. She won the midseason one-on-one tournament and was selected the inaugural league MVP while leading the Lunar Owls to a league-best 12-2 regular-season mark. They were the No. 1 seed heading into the playoffs before they were upset by the Vinyl in the first round.
For all of her success in Miami, Collier said she wasn’t trying to make a statement about the previous season.
“I wasn’t focused on the WNBA,” she said. “I was focused on Unrivaled and I was focused on myself.”
Collier was following the guiding principle that has allowed her to undertake so much: “It’s trying to focus on what’s right in front of me. I feel like that’s the only way to get through stuff. There is always so much going on you can’t focus on everything at once.”
But as Reeve watched her star player from afar, she noticed extra fire.
“You can’t escape the idea that there was fuel that came from not being able to complete the mission of a championship and how it happened,” Reeve said. “Maybe that was the beginning of her saying, ‘No, I want to win this.'”
Collier is presented the crown after winning the midseason one-on-one tournament during Unrivaled’s inaugural season. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
As was the case in Unrivaled, Collier is at the center of everything the Lynx do. And the ache of falling short last fall — in the MVP race, where she finished second to Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson, and in the Finals, where the Lynx were outscored 7-2 in overtime in the deciding game — still hung heavy. Almost every interaction Collier had over the 2024 WNBA season included someone congratulating her on a terrific season — though she viewed herself as having fallen short.
“That was the switch for her … she came into this season with a chip on her shoulder, appropriately backing up the words of, ‘Yeah, I’m a sore loser because I want to win,'” Reeve said. “She came in with that, and I was so giddy.”
Collier added: “[It’s] taking all of that anger and frustration and disappointment and turning it into: We don’t want to feel that way again. We have to make sure we are, individually, doing everything in the offseason to get better and then come back and have a different outcome.”
Her sharpened approach has led to personal statistical peaks. Collier is averaging a career-high 23.2 points on 51.7% shooting (her highest shooting percentage since her sophomore season). She’s also racking up 7.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.8 blocks, and 1.6 steals.
“Of course, I want to be the MVP,” Collier said. “But I’m never going into a game like, ‘I need to get this many points and I need to get mine so I can get my MVP numbers.’ You see it year after year: If your team is winning, you’ll get the awards. My No. 1 goal is a championship. I’d much rather get Finals MVP than league MVP, because that means we won.”
Collier, right, is at the center of everything Minnesota does, and the Lynx will likely go as far as she takes them. Elsa/Getty Images
When the team reported for the first day of training camp in May, Reeve told her players how their journey back to the Finals would be even harder than getting there in 2024.
“I had to remind them repeatedly that your starting place is not where we ended,” Reeve said. “I was trying to get them to understand that if you make assumptions and skip steps, you can’t get back to where we were. We have to do it all over again … our starting place is zero, it’s not the team we were at the end of last season.”
At first, Collier had to ask Reeve what she meant.
Reeve clarified: “Every journey is different, and the challenges are going to be different.”
This season has been a building process for the Lynx. They started the season with a 9-0 stretch but were playing below their lofty standards — winning games down the stretch, grinding them out, rather than dominating. They went through what they consider to be a slump, going 3-2 in their last five games heading into the All-Star break, though that was at the end of a stretch of 10 games in 18 days that Reeve called “one of the most illogical schedules in my 25 years of doing this.”
With 17 games left in the regular season, Minnesota wants its ultimate identity to take shape, and the Lynx started the final stretch of the season with a 23-point win over the Chicago Sky and 31-point victory over the Aces.
There’s an understanding in Minnesota that, no matter how complete of a roster and how well-rounded a team the Lynx are, they will go only as far as Collier leads them. She is the center of everything they do.
“I think pressure is a great thing. You have to perform well under pressure and I think I do that,” Collier said. “This team is mine. If we win or lose, both will be my responsibility. There’s a lot more on your plate, but I think it makes me a better player.”
Collier’s 3-year-old daughter, Mila, was on hand last August during the 2024 Paris Olympics on the U.S. women’s run to gold. Meng Dingbo/Getty Images
AFTER LUNCH, COLLIER heads downtown to a very overdue pedicure appointment. Between Mila, the Lynx, the WNBPA and Unrivaled, quiet moments for self-care are rare.
As soon as she gets home, she plans to nap before Mila is picked up from school. Her husband, Alex Bazzell, who is also the president at Unrivaled, will have business updates from the league. And the next day, she and the Lynx face the Aces.
The jumping from world to world continues.
“I feel like everything happened gradually, not just all at once,” Collier said. “So it feels manageable, but obviously, I do feel a lot of pressure.”
Collier never shows it.
“She has more grace in her pinkie than I do in my entire body,” Reeve said. “She is so graceful in everything that she does that she makes it look easy. And I’m sure it’s not … but she never looks overwhelmed.”
This calm, collected exterior as Collier navigates her responsibilities, her different worlds, is something she learned as a child from her father. He told her to remain humble off the court, and to never show frustration on it — a tactic that will get under her opponents’ skin more than anything.
Be unflappable.
Now, that’s applied to every part of Collier’s life. A Minnesota fanbase desperate for a championship. Fellow players gearing up for a labor fight. A stubborn toddler who next time might need more than string cheese to put her shoes on.
“They are all counting on me,” Collier said. “And when I think about it like that, for some reason, it takes the pressure off. You can let yourself down, but I don’t want to let them down.”