Bill Simmons rips WNBA commissioner: ‘no adults in charge of the league’
· Yahoo Sports
The WNBA has seen some pretty good basketball this season, but it’s been overshadowed quite a bit by manufactured outrage and discourse related to various players and topics that we don’t need to rehash here today. One person who sounds fed up with this is The Ringer’s Bill Simmons who made a prediction about WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert on his latest podcast.
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Simmons aptly compared the coverage of the league to the Twitter For You tab before predicting Cathy Englebert is on the way out, saying that “nobody needs a new commissioner more than the WNBA right now.”
MORE: Cathy Engelbert takes awkward jab at reporter during 2026 WNBA Draft
“The league’s legitimately fun to watch, and yet, all anyone talks about is dumb sh–,” said Simmons. “Anyone who participates in the sh—y discourse about the league, I think that speaks more about them than the league. But what the league really needs is a commissioner, and I would personally bet anything that we will not have this commissioner next year.”
“I’ve never seen a league more determined to not push fun stars and fun storylines and fun people,” Simmons continued. “Like, this Olivia Miles. If this was the NBA this would be all anyone talked about. Have you seen Olivia Miles? She’s on tonight. Oh my god. I saw the commercial. And in the WNBA, she’s like an annoyance that she’s just a good storyline. Like, push your f—ing players. Instead, it’s all this discourse stuff and they’re just stepping in bear traps left and right because they have no adults in charge of the league.”
Englebert’s job in danger
Englebert is the first and only commissioner the WNBA has ever had. She took the job in 2019 and has not received high marks over the last couple years as the league exploded in popularity.
Last year some of the league’s biggest stars, most notably Napheesa Collier, blasted her publicly as the league negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement. Many thought that Englebert would not survive negotiations with her job, but she managed to keep her job for at least another season.
Obviously, she hasn’t done much this season to convince anyone the league made the right decision bringing her back.
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