The face of the WNBA is not one athlete. It’s progress.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the 2026 campaign, there have been foolish arguments and bitter debates about which athlete is the face of the WNBA, and what every of the choices means for the way forward for the ascendant league.
The higher query is whether or not the W really wants a face with a purpose to prosper.
The biggest instance of the WNBA’s well being and vitality unfolded right here Saturday night: The Golden State Valkyries, an enlargement unit in simply its second 12 months of action, defeated the Atlanta Dream 68-63 in Game 7 of the Finals to victory their first WNBA title.
This was the league’s first ever title sequence Game 7, however historical past — and stability — belonged to Golden State. While Atlanta had star energy in Angel Reese, acquired in a commerce earlier than the campaign, the Valkyries had been a unit initially made up of unprotected gamers made obtainable in an enlargement draft earlier than the 2025 marketing campaign.
Gabby Williams, the Finals MVP who made league historical past with a 30-point effort in Game 7, was not a type of gamers.
A WNBA All-Star and All-Defensive first unit choice, Williams signed with Golden State this 12 months after spending the previous three campaigns with the Seattle Storm. She proved to be the difference-maker for the Valkyries all through the Finals and notably with the title on the road Saturday, setting a WNBA document by posting 28 factors after halftime of Game 7. Nobody has ever scored extra in a single half of a WNBA postseason sport.
The Valkyries’ victory makes the robust case that there’s ample depth of expertise now to help extra WNBA groups. For second-year Valkyries head leader Natalie Nakase, her unit’s fast rise additionally reveals what occurs when girls’s basketball expertise is given room to flourish. The Valkyries president is Jess Smith, the final supervisor is Ohemaa Nyanin.
“It’s a special moment because of our leadership — between me, Jess and Ohemaa,” Nakase mentioned. “When you have hard-working leaders that really want to help women’s sports, I think that really is what matters. It’s that the core is about empowering women and seeing what you can do when you have women leadership.”
Golden State Valkyries gamers raise the WNBA Championship Trophy after defeating the Atlanta Dream in Game 7 of the 2026 WNBA Finals at Chase Center on Oct. 31 in San Francisco.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Saturday’s Game 7 was vital past the ultimate field rating. In the grand scheme of the WNBA’s continued evolution, the fact is that everybody received: the groups, the gamers and particularly the league itself.
The historic seven-game sequence was the end result of a dream whose basis was laid when the WNBA was launched within the fall of 1996. This was huge information: a girls’s professional basketball league backed by NBA muscle would start action in spring 1997.
When she appears to be like again on that announcement 30 years in the past, Val Ackerman, the WNBA’s first president and now the commissioner of the Big East Conference, remains to be astounded by the extent to which a dream has turn into an inspirational actuality.
“Those of us at the ground floor dreamed of a future of strong TV audiences, full arenas, exciting competition night after night and nationally recognized players,” Ackerman wrote Andscape in a message from Rome, the place she was attending a Big East basketball sport. “Most of all, we wanted to see the women’s pro game respected, celebrated and valued. The future has arrived, and I tip my hat to the many, many people who have had a hand in bringing the league to where it is today.”
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The presence of the Valkyries in a title sport in solely their second 12 months of existence underlines the endurance and depth of expertise in a league that may rejoice his thirtieth anniversary subsequent 12 months.
But an equally vital historical past was achieved shortly after the present WNBA campaign started in May, when gamers and the league signed a collective bargaining settlement that created the primary complete revenue-sharing mannequin in girls’s skilled sports activities. The settlement might remodel the economics of the league.
Among different issues, the settlement raised the 2026 wage cap from $1.5 million to $7 million, and tasks greater than $1 billion in athlete salaries and advantages over seven years.
The presence of a athlete like Reese has helped convey nonstop visibility to the league for what she does on and off the courtroom. Other gamers, corresponding to five-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, or a younger star corresponding to Minnesota Lynx guard Olivia Miles, make it clear the WNBA is a league with a number of faces, not only one.
And that the WNBA has deep roots.
Golden State Valkyries guard Gabby Williams (left) drives to the basket in opposition to Atlanta Dream ahead Angel Reese (proper) in the course of the third quarter in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals at Chase Center on Oct. 19 in San Francisco.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
As the WNBA celebrates prosperity, it’s necessary for gamers to know the league’s historical past goes deeper than Saturday’s historic Game 7. For all the foolish arguments about who’s and isn’t the face of the league, the fact is that there have been a whole bunch — possibly hundreds — of faces who’ve made the W a singular cultural establishment on the American sports activities panorama.
The league’s historical past is its power and ought to be embraced, even because it expands and welcomes rising numbers of latest younger stars.
Reese was born in 2002, because the WNBA was making ready for its sixth campaign. The league already had established title traditions — and Black girls had been central to constructing these traditions.
Before Reese even took her first steps, Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Lisa Leslie had constructed title dynasties. Cooper, Swoopes and Thompson led the Houston Comets to the WNBA’s first 4 championships — 1997 by way of 2000 — earlier than Reese was born.
Leslie made historical past in 2002 when she grew to become the primary athlete to dunk in a WNBA sport. Later that summer season, the Sparks received their second consecutive title, sweeping the New York Liberty. Swoopes was the league’s MVP.
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The WNBA’s progress has been constructed on the shoulders of gamers, particularly Black girls, who carried the league by way of lean years, cultivated an viewers, created a tradition, and made the league credible.
Nearly 30 years later, the enlargement Valkyries symbolize the WNBA’s progress, whereas the Dream, making their fourth WNBA Finals look, epitomized the league’s endurance.
Among the numerous challenges on the horizon for the WNBA, the league now faces the daunting activity of discovering a brand new commissioner. Cathy Engelbert, who grew to become the WNBA’s first commissioner in 2019, is retiring on the finish of 2026.
Engelbert did quite a lot of good issues for the league. She grew its enterprise and visibility and oversaw plans to broaden from 12 groups to 18 by 2030. The league plans so as to add groups in Cleveland, Philadelphia and Detroit. Engelbert additionally launched the complete charter-flight program in 2024.
But whereas the present surge of consideration has attracted new followers, it’s additionally uncovered the W to further scrutiny, and the league has not dealt with it effectively. There has been criticism about officiating, athlete security efforts, and the league’s ineffective response to racism directed at Black gamers as a few of their white counterparts — most notably the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham — grew to become trigger célèbres of the nation’s proper wing.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert (left) presents Gabby Williams (proper) with the WNBA Finals MVP trophy. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
While the presence of Golden State reveals how far the league has come, the Finals had been marred by a recurring subplot of scheduling fiascos attributable to venue conflicts, a bungling highlighted by WNBA Finals Game 6 being performed at 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
It was an in-your-face instance of gamers nonetheless not receiving applicable respect or remedy, and confirmed how far the WNBA has to go to be handled on the identical stage because the nation’s prime males’s sports activities leagues.
The subsequent WNBA commissioner should shield and broaden the league’s basis and information the league by way of enlargement. The problem is to develop however not come up short sight of the league’s roots in activism.
During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, WNBA gamers used the league’s platform to lean into activism. Players embraced Black Lives Matter and #sayhername following George Floyd and Breonna Taylor being killed by police. They organized a day of motion after Jacob Blake was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
When then-Atlanta Dream’s co-owner, Kelly Loeffler — on the time a Republican U.S. senator type Georgia — objected to the WNBA’s help of Black Lives Matter, Dream gamers and gamers throughout the league responded by supporting Loeffler’s Democratic rival, the Rev. Raphael Warnock. Player’s advocacy grew to become a part of the WNBA’s id.
Now the league’s recognition is hovering.
In 2024, the WNBA loved its highest complete attendance in additional than 20 years and had its most-watched common campaign in 24 years. That recognition is barely anticipated to develop. Presumably, the brand new collective bargaining settlement will make gamers extra affluent.
Will the WNBA preserve its advocacy imprimatur even because it turn into extra in style and affluent? By the tip of the campaign, there have been no Black girls serving as head coaches within the WNBA. How will the league discover a method to give African American coaches and gamers visibility and alternative?
Those are questions for the longer term. For one historic night Saturday, WNBA followers reveled in a historic sport and celebrated the crowning of a first-time champion.
What additionally bears celebrating is the league’s depth of expertise and stars: No one face defines a league constructed on a basis of a number of stars and robust shoulders from a long time previous.
William C. Rhoden is a columnist for Andscape and the creator of Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. He directs the Rhoden Fellows, a coaching program for aspiring journalists from HBCUs.
