February 16, 2025
Collier is the WNBA’s reigning Defensive Participant of the 12 months.
There was some good basketball on show at Unmatched’s Wayfair Area in Miami, and hoops followers or ladies’s basketball followers obtained a style of the current vs the longer term within the championship spherical of the league’s first one on one match between Minnesota Lynx ahead Napheesa Collier and Washington Mystics ahead Aaliyah Edwards on Valentine’s Day.
In keeping with The Athletic, Collier, the WNBA’s reigning Defensive Participant of the 12 months, has largely used the league to announce her intentions on difficult the Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson as the most effective participant on the planet; she is averaging 29 factors and 11.5 boards as the most effective participant on the Lunar Owls.
Collier, one of many league’s co-founders alongside the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart, who performs for the Mist Basketball Membership, took one other step in Wilson’s route when she gave Edwards, who simply got here off a superb rookie season, an schooling in why no one likes guarding “Queen Phee” as Corridor-of-Famer Lisa Leslie typically calls her on the league’s broadcasts.
Not like the remainder of the match, which was a moderately high-stakes single elimination bracket, the championship spherical was a better of three collection, and though Edwards took the primary recreation 9-6, Collier confirmed her championship degree expertise and took the subsequent two video games 9-4 and 8-0 respectively behind her patented defensive depth and impeccable footwork, each on the drive and within the publish.
Edwards accomplished a Cinderella run by way of the match, knocking off Stewart within the first spherical, blanking her 12-0 earlier than happening to beat Allisha Grey, one other participant thought-about to be one of many favorites to win the match, after which dispatching Arike Ogunbowale, a shifty guard whose recreation was made for one on one basketball, and eventually, defeating Azura Stevens for the correct to face Collier for all of the marbles.
In all, Edwards made herself $75,000 throughout the course of the match, whereas Collier made $275,000 plus incomes her teammates an additional $10,000 apiece as a result of she received; each gamers prizes characterize a major windfall, in Edwards case, it’s greater than the $73,439 she earned because the sixth decide within the WNBA draft, and in Collier’s case it exceeds the WNBA’s Supermax which is presently capped at $249,244.
This sort of participant empowerment is a purpose why the league was began within the first place, tabbed from the very starting as a league constructed by basketball gamers for basketball folks, as Unmatched’s president of basketball operations, Luke Cooper, informed ESPN in January.
“Every part was constructed for the gamers. The enterprise was constructed for the gamers, the power was constructed for the gamers, and the precise recreation — the 3-on-3 full courtroom is rooted in how you’ll play basketball as a child,” Cooper stated.
The opposite piece of it’s serving to WNBA gamers adjust to the WNBA’s prioritization rule, which penalizes gamers who play abroad in the event that they’re not again with their groups by Might 19, in some circumstances in the course of their abroad golf equipment’ seasons.
As Edwards informed The Athletic, that piece of it was a consider her determination to participate within the league, however she wasn’t actually involved with the monetary implications of her match play.
“It’s type of loopy. I didn’t give it some thought (the prize winnings) like that,” Edwards stated. “However I believe that Unmatched is a good house for athletes, particularly younger athletes like myself, to capitalize on getting cash right here in North America and offering for our households.”
Collier, in the meantime, believes the league, and the one on one match side of it particularly, might change the course of the tradition for girls’s hoops, notably because it pertains to seeing younger feminine hoopers taking part in one on one within the playground.
“We’re attempting to essentially change the tradition of girls’s basketball,” Collier informed The Athletic. “You go to the playground or the park and also you see guys taking part in pickup or they’re taking part in 1s, you don’t see that with ladies so much, and we’re actually attempting to vary that, simply what it means to be a feminine athlete and the tradition of taking part in in your yard, taking part in on the park, taking part in 1s, like we’re doing. We’re not seeing that so much and so we’re attempting to vary that.”
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