Kamala Harris hosts WNBA player to discuss alleged conversation with league commissioner

Former Vice President Kamala Harris hosted WNBA star Napheesa Collier at the activist summit, “A Day of Unreasonable Conversation,” this week, where the player addressed recently alleging an explosive conversation with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. 

Collier recently alleged that Engelbert said in a private conversation, “[Caitlin Clark] should be grateful she makes $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything,” and that “Players should be on their knees, thanking their lucky stars for the media rights deal that I got them.” 

In her conversation with Harris, Collier defended her decision to make the statements publicly as the WNBA player’s union is currently negotiating a new contract with the league. 

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“No matter the consequences, I felt like it was something that needed to be done,” Collier said. 

“I am on the union for our CBA negotiations, like our collective bargaining negotiations for our league, and for so long I felt like I saw what was going on behind closed doors,” she added. “For so long, we tried to have these conversations and move the needle in those meetings that we would have with the league within our leadership. And I saw nothing was changing. Coaches, winning and losing alike, were complaining about the same things over and over again, players over and over again, and we weren’t seeing a change that our leadership was trying to make.

“I think I just got to the point where I was fed up. … Whether I was going to get annihilated for this or people were gonna support me, I felt like what I was doing was right. I felt like it needed to be said. So, no matter the consequences, I felt like it was something that needed to be done.”

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Engelbert said at a press conference last week that she did not make the comments about Clark.

“Obviously, I did not make those comments. Caitlin has been a transformational player in this league. She’s been a great representative of the game. She’s brought in tens of millions of new fans to the game,” Engelbert said. 

Engelbert addressed the alleged comments about the other players, claiming there have been a lot of “inaccuracies” reported in the media, but she did not explicitly deny making those comments as she did with the alleged Clark comments. 

“There’s a lot of innacuracy out there through social media and all this reporting,” Engelbert said. “A lot of reporting, a lot of innacuracy about what I say, what I didn’t say.”

Engelbert later said, “I’m disheartened. I’m a human too. I have a family. I have two kids who are devastated by these comments. So, all I say is that it’s obviously been a tough week, and I just think there’s a lot of innacuracy out there.”

Still, Engelbert acknowledged that if players don’t feel “appreciated,” she has to do better.

“I was disheartened to hear that some players feel the league and that I personally do not care about them or listen to them,” Engelbert said before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals Friday night. 

“If the players in the ‘W’ don’t feel appreciated and value from the league, we have to do better, and I have to do better.”

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The players’ association and the WNBA agreed to an eight-year agreement in 2020, but the WNBPA voted last year to opt out of the agreement early. The current agreement expires Oct. 31. 

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