Sports Business Journal:
Well before Napheesa Collier said today the WNBA had “the worst leadership in the world,”multiple sources had told SBJ that Cathy Engelbert would likely exit as commissioner sometime after the current CBA negotiationsdue to pressure inside NBA and WNBA circles.
The sources said Engelbert’s presumed departure, six years after arriving from Deloitte, is relationship driven, tied to the way she has dealt with colleagues and players amid unprecedented growth within the league. Today’s comments from an influential player such as Collier presumably won’t help Engelbert’s already unstable public standing and most likely exacerbated it.
“She hasn’t connected; she’s not a relationship builder, which you have to be in that job with the teams, with the players,” a source familiar with league office dynamics said last month. “I think she’s a wicked smart business person, and the success she gets a lot of credit for. But a commissioner has to have a personality element that can touch every constituent that they have. I think she’s just lacking in it.
“You’re where you are now, you have got to get through this labor negotiation. After that, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did a victory lap and rode off back into the corporate world somewhere.”