September 08th, 2026

9/8/2026

Bigger Business, Broken Trust: Cathy Engelbert’s WNBA Legacy

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

After seven years leading the WNBA, Cathy Engelbert, the first person to hold the title of commissioner, announced on Friday, September 4, that she would retire at the end of the year.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Engelbert said she originally intended to remain in the position for only 3 1/2 years. Instead, her tenure stretched twice that long and encompassed one of the transformative and contentious periods in league history.

The league is on a three-week hiatus for the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin, Germany, but Engelbert’s announcement became the league’s biggest story. The reaction from fans was strikingly celebratory, almost resembling the response to a championship rather than the retirement of a commissioner.

That reaction highlighted just how wide the gulf had become between Engelbert and many of the league’s players and supporters. What had once been tension had evolved into a highly public and well-documented feud.

Pressure had been mounting for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to address the league’s leadership problems. Engelbert’s departure now gives the NBA and WNBA an opportunity to define what the league needs in its next commissioner—and to find someone capable of leading it into a very different era.

It’s About Relationships

The Engelbert-player relationship had become increasingly strained, but any pretense of harmony disappeared in late September 2025.

After the Minnesota Lynx were eliminated from the playoffs, star Napheesa Collier, the First Vice President of the WNBPA Executive Committee and co-founder of the 3-on-3 basketball league, Unrivaled, held an end-of-the-season press conference with a prepared statement in her hand and a stern face.

Only days earlier, Collier had been injured in Game 3 of Minnesota’s semifinal series against Phoenix on a controversial play in which no foul was called. This intensified an already growing public outcry over officiating and league leadership.

Then Collier took direct aim at Engelbert. “We have the best players in the world, we have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world.” She didn’t stop there. “The real threat to our league isn't money, it isn't ratings or even missed calls or even physical play. It's the lack of accountability from the league office."

Nepheesa Collier press conference.

It was less a complaint than an indictment. Collier publicly challenged Engelbert’s leadership, credibility and relationship with the very players she was charged with leading. Coming from one of the league’s biggest stars and a senior union official, the words carried enormous weight.

Engelbert’s rebuttal that followed had none of the force of Collier’s attack. Rather than conveying a sense of heartfelt contrition nor recognition of how badly the relationship had deteriorated, it sounded more like a carefully constructed corporate response.

By then, this was no longer simply a disagreement over officiating. The dispute had exposed something much deeper: a breakdown of trust between the commissioner and the players. And neither side appeared ready to give ground.

The dispute had exposed something much deeper: a breakdown of trust between the commissioner and the players.

Bad Press

Somewhere along the way, the basketball became background noise. Instead of celebrating the brilliance of A’ja Wilson, the drawing power of Caitlin Clark or the emergence of rookie sensation Olivia Miles, the WNBA increasingly found itself trapped in a 24-hour news cycle dominated by what was happening away from the game.

The league struggled to get ahead of the barrage. They dedicated resources to combating racist, homophobic and misogynistic abuse online and in arenas, while repeatedly assuring the players and the public that it was committed to improving officiating. But each controversy seemed to create another headline.

It has been clear for some time that Engelbert wasn’t the person to lead the league into the future. Meanwhile, Commissioner Adam Silver must have felt as though he had taken up residence in The Glass House Museum in New Canaan, Connecticut: everything surrounding the league was suddenly visible, and the pressure for action was mounting.

The WNBA depends heavily on free media. Silver knows this well. A protégé of the late NBA Commissioner David Stern, Silver has spent more than three decades inside the NBA and watched stars such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James transform not only the game but the public conversation surrounding it. The WNBA had its own icons such as Cynthia Cooper, Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore and others, and the same lesson applied: positive press can shape the conversation and elevate a league, while relentless controversy can overwhelm it.

Finally, Silver stepped on Engelbert’s turf. In July, he publicly defended Caitlin Clark, calling it “incredibly unfair” that she had become a “political football” amid the controversies surrounding her and the league. Whatever his intent, the NBA commissioner had now inserted himself directly into a WNBA controversy that ordinarily would have belonged to Engelbert.

And Silver had plenty of issues of his own at the time. The NBA was considering expansion in the US, exploring a formal relationship with teams in Europe, and dealing with the investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard over possible salary-cap circumvention. Yet he still found time to address the turmoil surrounding the WNBA.

Silver approached it as a lawyer and longtime league executive would, through carefully worded statements, measured public appearances and little rhetorical excess. But the smoke kept rising. And by then, it was becoming harder to argue that the WNBA merely had a public-relations problem. It had a leadership problem.

Born in Philly

Long before Cathy Engelbert found her way into corporate boardrooms, sports were a major part of her life. Engelbert was born in Philadelphia and raised across the Delaware River in Collingswood, New Jersey, about ten miles from the city. She grew up in a large family with five brothers and two sisters, and basketball was part of the family fabric.

Her father, Kurt, was a standout player at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia in the mid-to-late 1950s. He played for Hall of Fame coach Jack Ramsay and was selected by the Detroit Pistons in the fourth round of the 1957 NBA Draft.

Engelbert followed her own athletic path. She played basketball, lacrosse and tennis in high school and was later inducted into her school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. At Lehigh University, she walked onto the basketball team, where she played under future Hall of Fame coach Muffet McGraw, and eventually became a team captain in both basketball and lacrosse.

Cathy Engelbert wearing her Lehigh University basketball uniform.

Her upbringing was decidedly middle class. Engelbert recalled during a 2025 appearance on The David Rubenstein Show that her father worked for RCA as an IT manager before his death at age 51 in 1987, while her mother spent 62 years as an office manager for the same pediatric practice.

Engelbert’s professional direction changed almost by accident during her sophomore year at Lehigh. She was majoring in computer science and taking a FORTRAN programming course when she had a realization. “I have no idea what that professor is talking about,” Engelbert told Rubenstein.

Someone suggested she transfer to the business school and study accounting, the “language of business,” she was told, and a field in which she would be able to find a job. The advice stuck. Engelbert graduated from Lehigh in 1986 with a degree in accounting and went to work for Deloitte. She would stay for the next 33 years.

I have no idea what that professor is talking about.

Her Game is Business

Business acumen has never been Cathy Engelbert’s problem. She is a woman of firsts. In 2015, after nearly three decades at Deloitte, she became the first woman to lead a Big Four accounting services firm. During a 33-year career there, she moved through a succession of increasingly important positions, developing particular expertise in financial instruments before ultimately spending four years as CEO.

The corporate world is clearly her comfort zone. Engelbert speaks the language of C-Suites and boardrooms and currently serves on the boards of McDonald’s and Royalty Pharma.

And then there is golf. “My passion now is golf,” she told David Rubenstein on The David Rubenstein Show. She explained that she took up the game after becoming Deloitte’s CEO and began encouraging other women to do the same. “It’s a great way to build relationships in the corporate world.”

In retrospect, that comment is revealing. Engelbert clearly understood the value of relationships in business. Yet in the WNBA, her ability to build and maintain those relationships—particularly with the players—became one of the most persistent criticisms of her leadership. The contrast is difficult to ignore.

When McDonald’s welcomed her to the board in late December 2019, the company praised her record at Deloitte, specifically noting that she was known for “driving a people-first agenda.” Six years later, her relationship with WNBA players had deteriorated to the point that one of the league’s most prominent stars could publicly accuse its leadership of being the worst in the world.

For someone whose résumé was built on managing organizations, cultivating corporate relationships and protecting enterprise value, that disconnect was more than a personnel problem. It became a business problem. Because in professional sports, the players aren’t simply employees. They are the product.

New Boss

Engelbert was hardly the obvious choice to run a professional basketball league. In 2019, when the WNBA appointed her as its first commissioner—elevating the title previously held by league presidents, the basketball world knew considerably less about Engelbert than the corporate world did. NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum had been overseeing the league on an interim basis following the departure of Lisa Borders, the WNBA’s fourth president.

For Engelbert, whose four-year term as Deloitte’s CEO was coming to an end, the opportunity arrived at precisely the right time. She was looking for what she called a “second act.” Basketball, at least, was familiar territory. Engelbert had played Division 1 basketball at Lehigh and later coached her daughter’s middle-school travel basketball team.

But she was still an unknown in professional basketball. “So, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to a lot of people, unless you had come to my office at Deloitte and saw basketballs all behind [me],” she told David Rubenstein. “We had a lot of basketball DNA in the family.” She smiled broadly as she recalled how the opportunity came about.

We had a lot of basketball DNA in the family.

“I want[ed] to do something different. Something with a broad women’s leadership platform, and something I had a passion for, thinking maybe it would take me to a college or university,’’ she said. “And then someone approached me about the WNBA commissioner’s job. And I said definitely is something different!”

Different was an understatement. She inherited a 12-team league still fighting for financial stability and mainstream attention. Teams traveled on commercial flights, often to arenas that had only a sprinkling of fans. Player compensation lagged far behind that of other major professional sports, with a maximum base salary of just $117,500 in 2019.

For many players, the WNBA season was only half of their working year. When it ended, players packed their suitcases and headed overseas— to Russia, Turkey, China, Asian and European leagues where the salaries could dwarf what they earned at home. The arrangement came with a cost: months away from families, year-round wear on their bodies and, as Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia would later demonstrate, risks that extended far beyond basketball.

Cathy Engelbert playing golf.

Engelbert’s leadership was tested almost immediately. Less than a year after she arrived, COVID-19 shut down sports around the world. The WNBA responded by moving its entire 2020 season to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, creating what became known as the “Wubble” (the female version of the NBA’s bubble). The regular season was condensed to 22 games, and the league managed to complete both the season and the playoffs.

But basketball was hardly the only crisis confronting the country. George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in May 2020 triggered nationwide protests and a renewed movement for racial justice. WNBA players became some of the most visible and outspoken athletes in professional sports, using the season to draw attention to racial injustice, police violence, and the #SayHerName campaign.

The league made it through. Six years later, Engelbert faced another defining challenge. The players had exercised their right to opt out of the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the league in October 2024, setting up nearly a year and a half of increasingly contentious negotiations. A tentative agreement finally arrived on March 20, 2026. Players ratified it three days later, and the WNBA Board of Governors followed on March 24.

The numbers were transformational. The 2026 salary cap jumped from $1.5 million to $7 million. The maximum salary rose to $1.4 million, average salaries were projected to exceed $583,000, and minimum salaries climbed to between $270,000 and $300,000. For the first time, many WNBA players could look at overseas basketball as an option rather than an economic necessity. It was one of the most consequential achievements of Engelbert’s tenure.

Beyond the new CBA, the business achievements during Engelbert’s tenure were substantial. The league moved from 12 teams toward 18 by 2030, instituted league-wide charter travel, and secured an 11-year national media-rights package reportedly valued at about $2.2 billion, with additional agreements that could push the total closer to $3 billion.

The WNBA that Engelbert will leave behind bears little resemblance to the one she inherited in 2019. She deserves credit for helping build that business. But commissioners don’t make jump shots, fill highlight reels or inspire children to wear a player’s jersey.

The extraordinary growth of the WNBA ultimately belongs to the women who put the product on the floor—from the stars who carried the league through leaner years to A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, and then to a new generation led by Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, Olivia Miles and others. Engelbert helped build the stage. The players gave everyone a reason to watch.

Engelbert helped build the stage. The players gave everyone a reason to watch.

Regrets?

For all of Engelbert’s accomplishments on the business side, she never seemed to communicate her love of basketball with the same ease or enthusiasm she displayed when discussing a media deal, expansion, or the league’s balance sheet. That distinction mattered.

Her public comments often emphasized what she had accomplished rather than what the league and its players had accomplished together. Over time, the distance between the commissioner and the players became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Yet when Rubenstein asked Engelbert if she had any regrets about taking the job, her answer was unequivocal. She said, “No regrets at all. This was a really good fit for me, personally, professionally, and [I] just enjoy the game so much. I could go to a game every day and it’s just been a total transformation of a league that was just surviving five, six years ago, and now thriving.”

Cathy Engelbert with David Rubenstein on the David Rubenstein Show.

Rubenstein then asked what she considered her biggest accomplishment. “So, getting through that pandemic year, I’m probably most proud of,” she told Rubenstein. “It was like working on an IPO (Initial Public Offering) for a couple of weeks, because I had just come in the league. I didn’t have a lot of relationships.”

She recalled the extraordinary circumstances confronting the league in 2020, persuading players that they could compete safely during a pandemic while the country was also confronting the killing of George Floyd and a national reckoning over race. “We had to convince the players to play—that we would keep them safe,” she said.

Engelbert then quickly returned to the language she knows best: business. “We were the first women’s sports property to raise capital at scale, $75 million. We probably could have raised more.”

It was vintage Engelbert, proud, confident and comfortable discussing capital, growth and transformation. Those were unquestionably among her strengths. The question that followed her throughout her tenure was whether running the WNBA required something more.

Next Commissioner

A commissioner is paid to lead. That means taking responsibility when things go wrong and sharing the credit when things go right. No one outside the league knows what Engelbert was compensated during her seven years in the job, but accountability comes with the title

The next commissioner will need Engelbert’s business instincts, but that won’t be enough. The WNBA needs someone who can execute a business plan while also building relationships with the people who make that business possible. The commissioner must be a diplomat, a consensus builder and, when necessary, a decisive leader willing to make difficult and unpopular choices.

Above all, the next commissioner must love the game and make the players believe it. That person must understand that the WNBA is not simply an investment opportunity, a media-rights package or an expanding collection of increasingly valuable franchises. It is a league built over nearly three decades by women who fought for respect, visibility, better pay, and the right to be taken seriously as professional athletes.

Time may ultimately look more favorably on Engelbert. The business transformation that occurred during her tenure is undeniable, and history may give her more credit for helping to position the WNBA for the extraordinary opportunity now before it.

But her departure also offers the league something it badly needs: a chance to rebuild trust. The next commissioner will inherit a WNBA that is bigger, richer and more visible than ever before.

The challenge now is to find someone who can bring its business and its basketball together—and convince the women who built the league that they are building its future together.

###

Anthony Price is an entrepreneur-turned-author and publisher of CT Hoops Magazine and Mini Books, known for brining compelling sports and business stories to life.

0 Comments