Napheesa Collier’s influence in the WNBA grows with each win on and off the court — Andscape

As Napheesa Collier prepared to take the court for Unrivaled’s 1-on-1 tournament in February at Wayfair Arena in Miami, she was asked how she dealt with having a target on her back as the tournament’s top seed.

“I think I’m the best player here. I just have to go out and show it,” Collier said.

The statement felt uniquely declarative for Collier, who in recent years had been known as more of a quiet, humble star in the WNBA as opposed to a more outspoken one.

That’s not to say the Minnesota Lynx’s All-Star forward hadn’t always believed she was the best player on whatever court she stepped on, but to make a statement of her prowess — on a national broadcast no less — signaled that the reticent label had possibly been outgrown.

After all, Collier was playing in Unrivaled, a first-of-its-kind league that she had co-founded. Months before, she had come within minutes of winning a WNBA title with the Lynx as the league’s Defensive Player of the Year. In April, she was named to the TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world. She’ll also serve as a vice president on the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) executive committee as it works to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

Collier’s actions, both on and off the court, have made her an increasingly prominent and influential face in the WNBA, which tips off a new season this weekend.

Perhaps Collier’s assertion ahead of the Unrivaled tournament, which she would ultimately win, was the demonstration of a player who has realized the power she has begun to build in the sport. Now she’s simply ready to wield it.

“You have a hand in creating an entire league. You are essential to what the WNBA is doing as far as the CBA, and on the court you’re the defensive player of the year,” said Minnesota Lynx assistant coach Rebekkah Brunson. “I think she realized that she does have power, and she understands that completely.”

Collier doesn’t believe in coincidences. Instead she believes that everything happens for a reason.

She felt that way about being picked sixth in the 2019 WNBA draft out of Connecticut despite believing she was the best in her class. Similarly, it’s how she feels about coming up heartbreakingly short of winning her first WNBA championship with the Lynx, which lost a decisive Game 5 to the New York Liberty in October.

“I guess the reason is still pending,” Collier said of last year’s defeat. “The resounding feeling after all of that was just, I don’t ever want to be in this situation again.”

The loss hit Collier hard. Saddled with a herculean task of being the franchise’s new face following an era in the 2010s in which Minnesota was the epicenter of the WNBA, Collier’s first opportunity to restore Minneapolis to its winning ways felt like it had slipped through her fingers.

“I want to create the reason,” Collier said. “I don’t want us to lose and it be for nothing. If we had to lose last year, I want us to use that as fuel so that we can win this year.”

One of the prevailing takeaways from the opening days of Lynx training camp was that Collier had returned to Minneapolis for the 2025 season with an added edge.

A season ago, Collier was one of the league’s elite performers, averaging 20.4 points, 9.7 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.9 steals per game. Had it not been for a historic season from Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson, Collier was next in line in the MVP race.

Lynx forward Bridget Carleton, who called Collier the best player in the league, said to expect the version of Collier fans have become accustomed to seeing, an All-WNBA level performer but better.

“I don’t know how that’s possible,” Carleton said. “She is already so good.”

Minnesota guard Courtney Williams said the accolades that Collier came within an arm’s reach of last season are hers to lose in 2025.

“Y’all about to see an MVP season,” Williams said. “MVP season and go get a [championship] ring.”

As a team, the Lynx return the core that got it to last year’s WNBA Finals and will be considered a top contender to vie for a title this season. Last year, Collier referred to Minnesota as “the happiest of accidents,” an assembled team of many new faces that found chemistry quickly to make a deep postseason run.

This year, the stakes are different.

“I feel like the expectations are higher because we know what we have,” Collier said. “We have that mentality where we want to re-create what we had last year and then, you know, hopefully end with a different outcome.”

On the first day of training camp, Lynx players took in a message from two of their assistant coaches – Brunson and Lindsay Whalen, who joined the coaching staff last November. Brunson and Whalen were a part of the 2016 Minnesota team that similarly lost the WNBA Finals in a decisive Game 5. The Lynx would return a year later and win the franchise’s fourth title.

“We don’t get 2017 if we don’t go through what we went through in 2016,” Whalen said.

Their message to this year’s team: Use last season’s loss as fuel for this season’s success.

“That would be an amazing story for us, too,” Collier said.

As a kid, Collier didn’t grow up having a particular entrepreneurial spirit. She wasn’t the child selling candy bars on the playground or opening a lemonade stand on her street corner.

What Collier did have, though, were opinions and curiosities – plenty of them.

“Growing up, my parents would literally limit me to three questions per topic, so I would just have so many opinions and be asking so many questions,” she said.

As a professional athlete, Collier wants to have an active role in her future within the sport of women’s basketball. That’s manifested in making sure she has a voice in the future of the WNBA, which she contributes to by being a part of the WNBPA’s executive committee.

It’s also manifested in Collier taking the future of the game into her own hands, which is a lesson she was taught by her parents while growing up in Jefferson City, Missouri. Collier remembers wanting to join a local basketball team as a kid but being turned away after the roster was at capacity. Instead of continuing their efforts to find Collier a team, her parents instead recruited other available players from surrounding towns to create a team of their own.

“We ended up being really, really good,” Collier said. “I think just being able to think outside the box in that way where if you get a ‘no’ here, you can do your own thing and create something even better.

“It’s like you see something that you think that you can improve upon or you see a hole that needs to be filled. Why wait for someone else to do it when we can do it?”

In 2023, Collier and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart co-founded Unrivaled, their 3-on-3 professional basketball league aimed at giving WNBA players an additional option to stay stateside during the offseason while being able to go up against top competition.

The league, which completed its inaugural season this past March, raised $35 million in funding from names such as South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley, tennis player Coco Gauff, former women’s soccer player Alex Morgan, Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps and Milwaukee Bucks power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. It signed a six-year broadcast deal with TNT Sports and secured over 20 corporate sponsors.

Players participating in Unrivaled were paid an average salary of $220,000, were given equity in the league and had access to amenities ranging from saunas and estheticians to on-site masseuses and child care.

“The ways in which both businesswise and basketball that [Unrivaled] impacted the W, I think, is something we’re going to look back on,” said Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve. “Businesswise especially, they showed what happens when you are focused solely on a product and not being an afterthought to a larger product.”

For Collier, a large part of her motivation for creating Unrivaled was to show what can be possible for women’s professional basketball players with a set goal of raising the standard for the sport.

“From the business perspective, [Napheesa] is just as competitive as she is on the court,” Stewart said. “Off the court, in the board meetings and making sure that, you know, she’s using her voice to kind of fuel change and do it in a positive direction.”

In March, as the Unrivaled season wound down, Collier posted a photo to Instagram of her 2-year-old daughter, Mila, in Miami. In the photo Mila is wearing a purple Lunar Owls sweatshirt, the team her mother played for in the league she created.