Final week, Napheesa Collier received Unequalled’s highly-anticipated 1v1 match, beating Aaliyah Edwards in three video games — after beating Katie Lue Samuelson, Courtney Williams, and Azura Stevens within the first three rounds.
As such, Collier was awarded the match’s lofty $200,000 money prize.
However, on Friday, ESPN’s Kendra Andrews reported that Collier shortly determined to separate her prize cash with the Lunar Owls’ coaching and efficiency workers. Collier wished to indicate appreciation to the workers members investing themselves into Unequalled, the brand new 3-on-3 league she co-founded with Breanna Stewart.
Unequalled’s inaugural season has been a large win for Napheesa Collier
Unequalled is within the midst of its first season and is providing gamers the very best common wage of any girls’s sports activities league, along with fairness. One of many league’s distinctive attracts is its 1v1 match, which spanned from Feb. 10 to Feb. 14 and featured 23 of the WNBA’s finest gamers.
Collier wasn’t the one participant to stroll away with extra cash from the 1v1 match. Edwards secured a $50,000 runners-up award, whereas Stevens and Arike Ogunbowale — each semi-finalists — walked away with $25,000 every. Every of Collier’s teammates on the Lunar Owls additionally earned $10,000 by being on her crew: Williams, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Allisha Grey, and Shakira Austin.
Now, the Lunar Owls teaching workers, led by DJ Sackmann, get in on the prize cash.
For Collier, Unequalled has been an opportunity to bounce again from a devastating loss within the WNBA Finals.
Up to now, Collier has additionally been the league’s most dominant participant, averaging 29.3 factors and 11.5 rebounds per sport.
The choice to share her prize cash along with her teaching workers displays a broader need to put money into the success of her league. Collier has made clear from the leap simply how necessary the league’s first season is to her.
“It’s like if you throw a celebration, you need folks to indicate up and have enjoyable, ?” she stated final month.
I requested Napheesa Collier concerning the expertise of taking part in basketball within the league she helped constructed, and he or she talked about it’s been a little bit irritating than taking part in earlier than:
“It is like if you throw a celebration, you need folks to indicate up and have enjoyable, ?” pic.twitter.com/jZLzIVS1pO
— Noa Dalzell (@NoaDalzell) January 28, 2025
The league goals to offer WNBA gamers an offseason different to going abroad whereas offering them with a state-of-the-art facility in Miami, full with a childcare heart and every little thing athletes want.
“We come up right here if we have to get remedy, work with the trainers, use a sauna, ice bathtub — no matter we want,” Arike Ogunbowale informed SB Nation final month.
Unequalled nonetheless has just a few weeks of motion remaining — the playoffs formally finish on March 17. Collier’s Lunar Owls crew is at the moment the league’s solely undefeated crew, and he or she’s on tempo to turn out to be the league’s MVP, which might conclude a wildly profitable season.
However, maybe probably the most impactful second from her Unequalled tenure would be the alternative to share her prize cash with those that have helped make sure the start-up league would achieve success.