MIAMI — Chelsea Gray sat in Unrivaled’s recovery room following her team’s loss on opening night of the new women’s 3-on-3 pro basketball league. As hot and cold tubs swirled nearby, the guard put her headphones on to drown out outside noise, cheers from her opponents seeping through the walls.
The Vinyl had beaten Gray’s Rose by six points in the nightcap of the doubleheader, and victory music and celebratory shrieks were continued reminders of the defeat.
Gray didn’t want to hear any of it. But with each locker room of the league’s six teams sitting adjacent to or across from one another, it was hard to escape. The competition is always just yards away.
That had been a plus during the preseason. Ahead of the league’s Jan. 17 tipoff, Unrivaled’s 36 players gathered in Miami for two weeks. They bonded over how special it was to share space with the top players in the WNBA, posting on social media together, getting dinners and joking in the hallways.
“It’s like a fun summer camp here,” the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese said a day earlier. “We’re doing everything we love to do, and just being all together at one time.”
But as the games began, the pleasantries had melted away. And Gray needed some space.
“I thought I was going to be OK,” Gray said. “I’m not OK.”
It didn’t take long for the camaraderie to be replaced by competition. In Friday’s inaugural game, the Lunar Owls’ Skylar Diggins-Smith and Mist’s Jewell Loyd traded 3-pointers before teammates swarmed Diggins-Smith after she hit the game-winning trey. The Vinyl led the Rose by just two points in the final minutes before pulling away.
By a lot of markers, Unrivaled officials viewed the league’s opening weekend as a triumph. Unrivaled sold out its 850-seat arena three game days in a row, and an average of 312,000 viewers tuned in to watch Friday’s openers. But equally important to Unrivaled’s stakeholders: They followed their “North Star” to give the athletes a world-class experience.
“It was as perfect of a debut as we could have asked for,” Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell told ESPN. “We knew the magic we had inside of the building.”
Founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, Unrivaled set out to give WNBA players a domestic opportunity to play competitively during their offseason and get paid a salary they believe they deserve. But the league also created organic opportunities for WNBA veterans to mentor younger players and a place where longtime opponents are teammates. For some players, the training facilities in Miami are better than what they have with their WNBA teams.
“We’re trying to set the bar on what it means to be a professional athlete, especially on the women’s side,” Collier said. “We’re trying to create change for all women’s basketball players.”
A few hours before Gray’s Rose played, Collier and Stewart stood inches away from one another, waiting for the ball to be tipped at Unrivaled’s inaugural game. They gave each other a glance. It was a moment of reassurance — and of celebration.
For the past two years, Collier and Stewart had worked hand-in-hand to build the league, and it was finally go time. Thirteen seconds after the ball went up, Stewart hit the first field goal in Unrivaled history. By the final whistle, Collier had scored a team-high 27 points.
How far they’d come since Bazzell — who is married to Collier — had sat across from them two years ago and posed a question: “If money wasn’t an issue, what is everything you would want and need for this league?”
The answers rolled off of their tongues. An infrared bed. A sauna. Cold tubs. Massage therapists. An aesthetician. Childcare.
“It sounds crazy to say this, but it feels like everything on our list was accomplished,” Collier, who along with Stewart announced their plans for the league in May 2024, told ESPN. “Actually, it’s all exceeded it.”
What was once a deserted parking lot is now a 350,000-square-foot building that serves as Unrivaled’s home. Wayfair Arena is located about 20 minutes northwest of downtown Miami and features an arena, a practice court and a training room with turf floors, a weight section, two squat racks and a row of cardio machines. There is a sauna, an aesthetician room and two cold and hot tubs.
At the front of the building is a playroom where the athletes can drop off their kids at the start of the day and pick them up after practice and games. There is a separate nursery and breastfeeding and pumping room. Players and their families live less than 8 miles away in an apartment complex.
“Everything is top-tier,” said Phoenix Mercury guard Natasha Cloud, who is on Unrivaled’s Phantom squad. “Seeing where and how far along they are in logistics and as a league, they’re miles ahead.”
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Chelsea Gray has eyes in the back of her head on this assist
Chelsea Gray throws an assist over her head to Azura Stevens for a Rose bucket.
Players are reportedly being paid an average salary of more than $200,000. Unrivaled officials have repeatedly declined to comment on specifics about the league’s pay but have said they are offering the highest average salary in all of professional women’s team sports.
Players also receive up to 15% equity in Unrivaled, and Bazzell said that number differs from person to person depending on how long they’ve played professionally and career accolades.
“We talk all the time about how we put more money into the players’ pockets,” he said. “It’s cash. It’s equity. It’s resources. It’s training. It’s a chef. It’s an aesthetician. It’s childcare. We’ve always tried to be progressive with other ways to put that money into their pockets. It’s not as simple as, ‘What is your average salary?’ because we don’t have a [collective bargaining agreement].”
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Skylar Diggins-Smith sinks rainbow 3 to win first Unrivaled game
Skylar Diggins-Smith struts after sinking a 3-pointer to hand the Lunar Owls the first win in Unrivaled history.
Multiple players in Miami likened Unrivaled to Team USA training camps, where there are ample opportunities to learn from the best players, especially those usually on the opposite bench.
“It’s what I enjoy the most about the Olympics,” said Kahleah Copper, who teams with Gray on Unrivaled’s Rose, as she did last summer on USA Basketball’s gold-medal winning team in the Paris Olympics. “Many of us are going at each other’s necks for the entire [WNBA] season, and during the Olympics you get a really good chance to bond — and that’s the same here.”
Added Diggins-Smith, a gold medalist on Team USA’s Tokyo Olympics team: “I wish I had this when I was younger.”
Player development has been emphasized throughout the early stages of Unrivaled, with a core value being to “make players leave better than when they came in,” Collier said.
It’s also a contrast to playing overseas, where players said it’s hard to work on personal goals because of travel, practice and games with their international team or limited access to resources.
“You’re not getting that every day, getting a little bit better,” Stewart said. “And here, we are.”
Players such as Kate Martin, a guard the Golden State Valkyries selected in the WNBA expansion draft, showed up to Unrivaled with a small list of things Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase wants her to work on.
Satou Sabally puts in at least an hour of individual work with one of the on-site trainers every day. She also had a training session with Miami Heat player Jimmy Butler.
The games themselves also lend to player development. With six players on each team, everyone plays a lot of minutes and gets in-game reps. Because there are fewer people on the court, one-on-one matchups are far more important, and everyone is involved in the play, rather than used as a decoy. And with the speed of the game, there is rarely a set play. Everything is on the fly.
“To be able to implement everything that we’ve been working on up until this point against live action, and against the most elite players, that’s where you continuously get better,” Cloud said. “Iron sharpens iron.”
And they’re helping each other improve. During Rose’s opening game against Vinyl, Reese missed a read, resulting in her missing a pass from Gray. Reese started to shake her head at the error, but Copper and Gray immediately beckoned her to join them in a huddle on court.
Reese’s relationship with Copper has become especially important to the Sky sophomore’s time in Miami. Despite playing different positions, Copper has helped Reese work on her finishing, creating a post-practice routine they go through every day. And because Copper won a championship — and Finals MVP — in 2021 with Chicago, Reese views her as having the blueprint to being successful with that franchise.
“Veteran leadership is really important,” Reese said. “Our team was so young in Chicago. It’s a breath of fresh air being able to have them push me every day. After practice, I stay late working with them. It’s building my confidence up.”
Still, the competition is intense, and playing hard came naturally for a group of players, including 17 former Olympians, who have competed at the highest levels. For some, it was a reason to sign on with Unrivaled.
“I knew the players that were coming here, I knew the caliber of talent,” said Diggins-Smith, a guard for the Seattle Storm. “I knew the types of dogs we would have. … Coming in here you better be competitive, or you were going to get your ass busted.”
When the dates were set for Unrivaled’s inaugural season, league officials couldn’t have predicted the boom in women’s sports, particularly basketball. They also didn’t know they would be coinciding with CBA negotiations.
Now, Unrivaled has a chance to make an impact on those negotiations.
A source told ESPN that Unrivaled officials have been in loose contact with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, but have had no conversations regarding the negotiations. But last week, several Unrivaled players compared the league’s resources with what they have in the WNBA.
“It’s not OK that we cold tub with college athletes, that we share our locker room with random people, or we have to train at a rec center,” said Sabally, who earlier this month said she has played her last game with the Dallas Wings. “It’s not the standard we deserve as the best women in the world in the WNBA. Unrivaled is setting a great standard in that way. We will all come back and demand that for our teams.”
Bazzell told ESPN that the WNBA has been supportive of the startup, and in return players have been vocal to their WNBA teams about what they’ve experienced in Miami. Reese said she has texted Sky executives about what she has had access to and what she believes the team needs to implement moving forward.
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Alyssa Thomas calls game with putback winner for Laces
Alyssa Thomas corrals a miss and puts it back in to win it for the Laces against the Mist.
Over the past few seasons, world-class training facilities have become a selling point for free agents in the WNBA, and players seem to like what is available to them in Miami. Those with comparable facilities at their WNBA team have been using the comparison to pitch to free agents.
“It’s really true,” said Sabally, one of the top free agents this year. “You’re able to talk to other players directly and you can figure out what they have, what type of resources, how important the team is to the owners. If you have an owner of a team that doesn’t prioritize the women’s team, they’re going to talk about it. And that’s a place where I would less likely like to go.”
Unrivaled sees opportunities for growth in its own league, laying out expansion and sustainability as its top two priorities moving forward.
“We have a mindset where we want to improve each day, regardless of what we thought the results were,” Bazzell said. “We’re in Year 1. We’re not going to bat 1.000.”
That could even mean rule changes for next season, as Unrivaled tests out its format and scheduling in real time. The league’s “winning score” rule — determined by adding 11 points to the leading team’s score through three quarters — means every game ends on a game winner. But the Phantom and Laces game on Saturday was a blowout, and illustrated that if the game isn’t close heading into the final period, the intensity can disappear. With the Phantom trailing by 32, there was little defense and less hustle, and it lacked all of the excitement of opening night.
But it’s also the offseason, and as New York Liberty and Phantom guard Sabrina Ionescu pointed out, it’s difficult to give Unrivaled as much of herself as she does to the WNBA.
“This is the middle of our offseason, so there is a fine line between understanding you are here to get better and work,” she said, “But for me, I can’t be as intensely locked in like I am in the W. I’d be burned out by the time the W season starts.”
Unrivaled officials said they want to expand in the future, but aren’t sure how quickly they’ll grow. When they do, some of those roster spots already belong to women’s basketball’s next set of stars, a necessary piece to making sure Unrivaled has longevity.
Reese, the 2024 No. 7 pick, and Aliyah Boston, the 2023 No. 1 overall pick, are two of the young players in the inaugural season. LSU’s Flau’Jae Johnson and UConn star Paige Bueckers, the projected No. 1 pick in April’s WNBA draft, have NIL deals with Unrivaled, and Bueckers has said she plans to play in Unrivaled when she goes pro. USC’s JuJu Watkins is among the league’s investors.
“We want to become a major part of this ecosystem,” Bazzell said. “In what way, only time will tell.”
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