Cathy Engelbert’s critics get a turn now — Live from FIBA World Cup

Welcome to Basketball Insider, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. The big news finally dropped on Friday — as you know if you read The IX Sports, I knew somewhat earlier — that Cathy Engelbert has decided to retire as WNBA commissioner at the end of the 2026 calendar year.

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I spoke at length about this in our latest podcast with Jackie Powell, and I’ve written about Engelbert many times in this space. I think there are two separate but linked elements to her legacy. One, we already know: what has happened on her watch. The other, we’re about to find out: can her successor build on the league’s 2026 momentum?

It has always perplexed me that the harshest critics of Engelbert would essentially invalidate their more reasonable claims — that Engelbert would have been better served by getting ahead of narratives about the league, utilized more proactive PR strategies and built better personal relationships with players and owners — by pretending that the league hasn’t grown in ways that make the WNBA Engelbert stepped in to lead back in July 2019 unrecognizable.

The optimistic conversations among league and team executives back then was around the concept that the WNBA might someday reach a level for player compensation that somewhat discouraged overseas play. That was the best-case scenario. So many elements of the 2026 WNBA did not exist in 2019 and were made possible by sound business decisions, excellent hires and infrastructure that could capitalize on the incredible product that is WNBA basketball.

The counterargument to this — that the league’s growth isn’t just made possible by its great players but is, in fact, solely because of the players — falls apart almost immediately upon examination. This current generation is incredible, but I’m supposed to believe that Engelbert is irrelevant to the current growth trajectory, and that the real reason the league struggled to monetize in the same way prior to her arrival was … Maya Moore and Tamika Catchings weren’t great enough to get it done? It simply makes no sense.

Take a look at the size of the companies in the WNBA Changemakers program. Then go back and watch Moore and Catchings play and note that “Boost Mobile” is written on the front of their jerseys. I still don’t know what “Boost Mobile” is and I covered the league for the entirety of their run as the WNBA’s jersey sponsor! Is it phones? Is it a protein drink? Is it port-o-potties? I guess I’ll never know. It was not a sponsor worthy of Moore, Catchings and their contemporaries.

As Engelbert explained last week, the league truly is set up for success now, and long into the future. Think about what a league can control, and the WNBA has settled its business. The media rights deal, labor peace, long-term contracts with partners that will ensure revenue well into the next decade. In many ways, it is a plum job.

But, well, not in all the ways. Taking a survey across the media and social media landscape following her announcement, it was impossible to miss the gap between her accomplishments and the vitriol she faced even as she left.

On the other hand, there are reports which accurately capture what Engelbert has done for the WNBA:

Some owners and other observers have said over the years that Goodell is worth whatever the owners pay him, based on how much money he has made for them, their teams, the league, and players.

Whoops! That’s what Front Office Sports reported about Roger Goodell, who just signed on for a four-year extension as NFL commissioner. Read this story and tell me if you can find any trace of discussion about his relationship with players, his ability to speak off-the-cuff publicly. You won’t! It’s simply not part of the way commissioners are covered, not Goodell, not Rob Manfred, not even Adam Silver. Engelbert has suggested she thinks there is a gendered element to this coverage and I agree.

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Which is, of course, not a reason to hire a man rather than a woman to run this league. There are no shortage of excellent candidates, either, and the league doesn’t need a gimmick hire. Personally, I’d make sure whoever is hired is someone familiar enough with the ins and outs of the WNBA to skip the learning curve. My list would start with Carley Knox of the Minnesota Lynx and Keia Clarke of the New York Liberty, Jen Rizzotti of the Connecticut Sun and Jess Smith of the Golden State Valkyries. There are great external candidates, too, like Nike exec Tanya Hvizdak. I can’t decide exactly how to characterize the insider/outsider status of Swin Cash and Catchings, but I’d certainly make sure they are on the list. You’d be foolish not to call WNBA agents like Lindsay Colas and Erin Kane and if not gauge their interest, at least hear their suggestions. I’d even see whether the original WNBA leader, Val Ackerman, will come out of retirement. But most of all, I’d sure listen to Engelbert, who knows better than anyone what is required of this specific job.

Whoever succeeds her, we won’t ever get the true counterfactual that both those who believe her tenure was a success, those who rate it an unmitigated disaster and all in-between would hope for: to know what the WNBA would look like, 2019-2026, had someone else run it. There’s too much progress that a new leader will get to build on, not to mention a national political climate that has somehow curdled beyond even the early years of Engelbert’s tenure, the league now a target of it.

But we’re going to get as close as possible to knowing what would have happened. The WNBA is about to embark on 2027 and beyond with a new leader and financed by media rights deals, a CBA and an expansion pattern all set by Engelbert. The only difference will be that the commissioner won’t be Engelbert herself.

How much that matters will have a great deal to do with who the WNBA owners choose. They didn’t do themselves a ton of favors maximizing the candidate pool by sniping at Engelbert while she made them gobs of money, rather than treating her the way NFL owners do Goodell.

And the players, who as a group seemed to warm up to Engelbert’s tenure, if not Engelbert herself, once the evidence of her success began rolling in this season, may not be happy with a new commissioner who is more comfortable in front of the camera at the expense of closing the deals Deloitte’s former CEO made a regular part of the WNBA’s business existence for the first time since the Ackerman years.

As for the takes we’ve read since the news broke? Well, let me put it this way: I think some of them will age a lot more gracefully than others. And in that spirit, here’s mine: I expect it is a matter of time, and it shouldn’t be a long time, until I cover Cathy Engelbert’s induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame. Not bad for a ballplayer from Lehigh.

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This week in women’s basketball

Terrific podcast from Maya Goldberg-Safir on how different things were for LGBTQ+ WNBA fans back in the Sacramento Monarchs days.

I thought Candace Buckner did a fantastic job outlining what will be required of the next commissioner.

And it is crazy that we’ve gone this far without mentioning the FIBA World Cup. I don’t even know how to pick one story among the gems Lukas Petridis is filing for us at The IX Sports in Germany, read them all please.

And Scott Mammoser is killing it on the USA Basketball beat for us there as well.

Maggie Hendricks did an exceptional job capturing the very Skylar Diggins 2026 season, now completed.

And don’t miss Marisa Ingemi on the development of Justė Jocytė.

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Five at The IX: Live from Germany

Are you subscribed to our YouTube channel yet? Go ahead and do that now to get postgame video reports from every single WNBA market. But also, do it so you can get updates at the FIBA World Cup from Lukas Petridis, who takes you inside the action every day.

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Soccer: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tennis: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Basketball: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Softball: Maren Angus-Coombs, @Maren-Angus, The IX Sports
Golf: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Hockey: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Gymnastics: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer