Welcome to 2026, the year of women’s basketball abundance

Basketball Wednesday

Presented by The BIG EAST Conference

The WNBA collective bargaining negotiations are rushing quickly toward another deadline, and this one, January 9, represents a different set of imperatives for both sides. The league is running out of time to avoid an offseason version of the 2012 San Diego Fireworks, while the players are on the cusp of a work stoppage that could actually affect their bottom lines (doing it during the offseason is a lesser danger to earning power).

But it’s hard not to step back and notice that whether we’re talking about the demands of the players or the current offer by the league, the resulting bounty that players will make for playing professional basketball here in this country and Canada will be vastly higher than at any point in sports history. I’m not here to say precisely what that number should be, beyond warning all sides that an even larger proportion of the salary cap required to pay max salaries (see Alexa Philippou’s excellent reporting for details) is going to directly affect the ability of most WNBA players to make a living. No matter how this thing gets settled, though, women’s basketball is about to see a massive jump in salaries. That’s not in dispute.

And similarly, no one is really wondering whether, should the WNBA fail to capitalize on its current position, if women’s basketball as a domestic profession will cease to exist, as it has for long periods of time in our nation’s history. Instead, writers like Annie Costabile are reporting on whether Unrivaled, which tipped off this week, even needs the WNBA at all. The answer, much of which can be found in that piece, isn’t as easy as a yes or no, but the larger takeaway is that we’re again talking about a landscape where there are many more opportunities to make a six-figure living in a space where, just a few years ago, there were virtually none.

And a fascinating footnote: one of the founders of Unrivaled, Napheesa Collier, was lost for the Unrivaled season due to injury, and if there were any questions in anyone’s mind whether it would prove fatal to Unrivaled’s season, I didn’t see them posed. This is no knock on Collier, one of the greats of her generation. It just means there’s a critical mass understanding that no, women’s basketball isn’t about any one person (by the way, it never was!). It’s way too big for that now. There’s an abundance of talent. This newcomer to Unrivaled, Paige Bueckers, seems pretty good! I’ll be coming to you live from Miami next week.

Even the collegiate game is deeper than ever before. I spoke to Jeff Walz, the Louisville head coach, about his transfer Laura Ziegler. Fascinatingly, she’s just as effective for the Cardinals in the ACC as she had been for St. Joseph’s in the Atlantic 10. And Walz’s answer as to why touched on a simple reality: there are ACC-level players performing every day in the Atlantic 10 and all over the country. There’s too much talent to contain it in the Power 5 conferences alone.

You even see this in the Ivy League’s evolution. No longer is the league’s Princeton territory only. Columbia is every bit a power at the same level, and Harvard has been over the past few seasons, Penn prior to that. Still, even that doesn’t fully capture the depth of the Ivy, with Brown’s emergence, and then the shocking result of Cornell upsetting Columbia on Saturday night. That is to say, my initial reaction when I saw that result — “wait, what?” — shouldn’t have been so surprised. Even in the Ivy League, there’s enough talent to power a majority of programs now.

Do not mistake this observation for a Pollyanna belief that everything is not only amazing but will work out for sure. There is ample work to be done, and sadly, the history of women’s sports includes a combination of outside actors taking apart clear gains and the sports themselves committing almost unfathomable live ball turnovers in judgement.

But I simply do not remember a moment in women’s basketball that offered quite so many pathways to further success, quite so much on and off-court promise. Amid a 2026 that offers a fresh hell with every buzz of my phone’s alerts, this is a glorious thing to cling to in the months ahead, and a glorious buffet of stories for us all to report on and for you to read, listen to and watch.

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This week in women’s basketball

New Bracketology dropped!

Josh Verlin checks in on Villanova.

I get to see Vanderbilt later this month and I cannot wait.

UCLA-USC lived up to the hype.

Duke: possibly not dead yet!

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Five at The IX: Kim Caldwell, Tennessee

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