Some of the brightest WNBA stars are packing their bags, as the league's free agency window revs up at breakneck speed, with Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner joining others on the move this week.
After 11 seasons with the Mercury — the team that drafted her No. 1 overall in 2013 — Griner officially jumped ship on Tuesday. The 10-time All-Star will ink a one-year deal with the Atlanta Dream when the official signing period opens on February 1st.
Griner explained her free agency enthusiasm in a social media post. "I was able to find where I wanted to go," she said.
"It was a hard decision," Griner continued. "You're leaving what you know, what I've known for my whole career. But there's also the exciting factor... I get to show them something different."
Meanwhile, Phoenix is reportedly closing a deal to receive Connecticut Sun superstar Alyssa Thomas. The four-player trade will send Natasha Cloud, Rebecca Allen, and the 12th pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft to Connecticut. In exchange, Phoenix receives five-time All-Star Thomas and veteran guard Ty Harris.
League changes spark WNBA stars to explore new teams
A new CBA is entering negotiations and the WNBA's first expansion team since 2008 — the Golden State Valkyries — tips off this season. Subsequently, players across the league are advocating for their futures with increased sway.
Griner, Thomas, Jewell Loyd, and Kelsey Plum are all reportedly leaving the teams that originally drafted them. Most players are signing one-year deals due to the 2026 CBA's anticipated changes — and the deep free agency pool it will create.
While Griner and others are exploring first-ever moves, players like Thomas have been outspoken about seeking improved resources. The conversation is fueled in party by Unrivaled's top-of-the-line facilities.
"They have everything you possibly need here," Thomas said from the3×3 league's Miami campus. "They don’t really have a lot of those things in Connecticut. I've been trying to absorb as much knowledge as I can."
Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball is back, as a second slate of weekend games shines a spotlight on the new league's three winless teams as they rally for redemption.
Phantom BC, Mist BC, and Rose BC are all 0-2 out of the gate, with the six-team league evenly divided between the undefeated and the winless after last week's debut.
At least one of the three will end up in the win column on Friday night, with the Mist and Phantom squaring off in the first game of the doubleheader.
Both lineups contain serious firepower, with Unrivaled co-founder Breanna Stewart leading the Mist alongside sharpshooter Jewell Loyd, whose 20 points per game have her currently in fourth-place on the league's stat sheet. The Phantom boasts the talents of Sabrina Ionescu and Brittney Griner.
While both have fallen victim to more cohesive game-plans, the Phantom in particular have struggled, posting a league-low average of 58.5 points per game to ultimately drop their first two outings by an average of 29 points.
Saturday's action sees Chelsea Gray and Angel Reese's Rose BC step into the spotlight, going up against a Mist team facing back-to-back matchups.
The Rose roster features two of the offseason league's top scorers in Gray and Kahleah Copper, who each averaged 14.5 points per game through Unrivaled's opening weekend. However, they'll need to lock in on defense to quiet Mist standout DiJonai Carrington's shooting in transition.
Friday's Unrivaled doubleheader tests undefeated teams
The second game of Friday's doubleheader flips the script as two teams put their undefeated starts on the line.
The Laces, led by Kayla McBride's 24.5 points per game, will take on a Vinyl side that rosters three of the league's Top 10 scorers — more than any other Unrivaled team. The trio of Rhyne Howard, Dearica Hamby, and Arike Ogunbowale are poised to cool the Laces' hot start.
How to watch Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball games
Unrivaled's second weekend slate tips off on Friday with the Phantom vs. the Mist at 7:15 PM ET, before the Laces play the Vinyl at 8:15 PM ET. Live coverage of both games will air on TNT.
The Phoenix Mercury could be entering a new era, with unrestricted free agent Brittney Griner and 20-year WNBA veteran Diana Taurasi both feeding the rumor mill with departure buzz.
The legends have played their entire WNBA careers for Phoenix, sharing the court for more than a decade after joining the Mercury as overall No. 1 picks out of the WNBA Draft in 2004 (Taurasi) and 2013 (Griner).
Griner is actively exploring the free agency market, taking meetings with multiple teams this week while showing off her 3x3 skills with offseason league Unrivaled.
On the other hand, Taurasi is rumored to be retiring. However, neither the WNBA's all-time scoring leader nor the Mercury have confirmed any moves.
Last season, Phoenix anticipated the three-time league champ fulfilling a threat to quietly retire and avoid a farewell. Subsequently, the team honored Taurasi with an emotional "If This Is It" curtain call at the end of the 2024 season.
The 11-time All-Star's most recent statement about retirement came shortly after exiting in the first round of the 2024 WNBA Playoffs. That's when Taurasi voiced her indecision.
"I have not taken it lightly. I think about it every day," Taurasi told The Associated Press. "I’m still in deep thought about it. I want to make the right decision, you know, and I’m just taking my time a little bit."
WNBA free agency negotiation window opens
As for Griner and other WNBA free agents, potential teams are currently courting these top athletes, as the league’s negotiation period officially opened on Tuesday.
No deal can be signed before February 1st. Meantime, many top free agents are capitalizing on what Unrivaled co-founder Breanna Stewart calls the offseason league's "one-stop shop" recruiting ground.
"You're able to talk to other players directly," Satou Sabally said from Unrivaled's Miami campus. "You can figure out what do they have, what type of resources, how important is their team to the owners?"
Regardless of where they go, expect most free agents to ink one-year deals, as this year's CBA negotiations will likely increase 2026 salaries — making athletes hungry to level up again in next year's free agency market.
Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball tips off its inaugural season on Friday night, when four of the league's six clubs will take the court for the first time.
The Miami-based league's debut doubleheader begins with a co-founder face-off, as Breanna Stewart's Mist will first square off against 2024 WNBA Finals foe and fellow Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier's Lunar Owls.
Shortly after that inaugural game, Rose BC, whose roster includes top-rated 2024 rookie Angel Reese plus WNBA Finals MVPs Kahleah Copper (2021) and Chelsea Gray (2022), will take the Unrivaled court. Facing them in Friday's nightcap will be Vinyl BC, a team headlined by WNBA Rookies of the Year Aliyah Boston (2023) and Rhyne Howard (2022).
The two remaining Unrivaled teams will debut on Saturday afternoon, when Phantom BC takes on Laces BC in another 3×3 doubleheader.
Led by All-Stars like Brittney Griner and reigning WNBA champion Sabrina Ionescu, the Phantom will start the season without guard Marina Mabrey due to a calf strain. Her recovery is expected to take two to four weeks, with an injury re-evaluation set for late January. In the meantime, the Phantom have added relief player Natisha Hiedeman to their short-handed roster.
IT'S GAME DAYYYYYYY! 🗣️ Make sure you tune in tonight at 7pm ET! pic.twitter.com/vAZ2IkemoF
— Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) January 17, 2025
Unrivaled stars prepare for their close-up
The innovative new league is launching with 36 of the WNBA's biggest stars, a brand new 3x3 format, and a product finely tuned for national TV broadcast. The goal is to bring fans even closer to their favorite athletes.
Subsequently, Unrivaled has teamed up with six US bars "dedicated to elevating women's sports" in an effort to promote official watch parties nationwide.
"The content piece and the TV piece of this is huge for us," Collier told The Athletic ahead of Friday's launch. "We want to make it the most interactive, fun, and exciting experience we can for people."
With a smaller court and cameras positioned closer to the action than in WNBA games, Unrivaled is aiming to bring a small-venue experience to a national audience.
"It’s definitely intimate, and you’re definitely going to hear a lot of stuff," Mist athlete Jewell Loyd told The Athletic. "But at the same time, that’s what you want, and it’s definitely going to make us play a little harder."
How to watch Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball this weekend
The new 3x3 league will tip off with the Mist and Lunar Owls at 7 PM ET on Friday, with Rose BC and Vinyl BC following at 8 PM ET.
All Unrivaled games will air across TNT, truTV, and Max throughout the season, with Friday's tip off broadcast live on TNT.
The 28th WNBA season starts tonight, and one of the week's most anticipated games will be played without two of its biggest stars.
Phoenix center Brittney Griner and Las Vegas guard Chelsea Gray are currently both sidelined with injuries, unfortunately missing out on the head-to-head clash that officially kicks off the 2024 season.
Griner is out with a left foot toe fracture, the Mercury announced on Monday. She’ll be out for an unspecified amount of time, and will be re-evaluated in the coming weeks.
Brittney Griner will be out due to a toe fracture and will be re-evaluated in the upcoming weeks, the team announced. pic.twitter.com/0ivATLzxlu
— Just Women’s Sports (@justwsports) May 13, 2024
The 6-foot-9 starter is a major loss for Phoenix, as she added some much needed size to the guard-heavy roster. The team is scheduled to play eight games throughout the month of May, including two against defending champs Las Vegas along with a road game against the stacked New York Liberty.
Gray, meanwhile, has been ruled out for the Aces’ season opener. She injured her foot during the WNBA Finals last season and spent much of training camp rehabbing the lingering knock. The former Finals MVP recently signed a contract extension with Las Vegas.
"We'll be reevaluating her daily, but also probably in a couple of weeks," head coach Becky Hammon said. "She's a little dinged up right now, so we'll take that one step at a time."
The Aces square off against the Phoenix Mercury on Tuesday at 10 PM ET.
Charter flights are on the horizon for the WNBA, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying on Tuesday that the league will provide teams with full-time private travel services beginning as soon as this season.
The move is set to address years of player safety concerns, among other issues. Engelbert told AP Sports Editors that the league aims to launch the program "as soon as we can logistically get planes in place."
The initiative is projected to cost around $25 million per year over the next two seasons.
The WNBA has previously provided charter flights on a limited basis, including during the postseason and when teams were scheduled to play back-to-back regular season games. Individual owners seeking to independently provide their teams with private travel — such as the New York Liberty’s Joe and Clara Wu Tsai back in 2022 — faced significant fines for using unauthorized charters.
While players and team staff have been calling for league-wide charters even before Caitlin Clark and other high profile rookies joined the league, Engelbert has routinely cited steep year-to-year costs as the reasoning behind sticking to commercial flights.
However, the WNBA's surging popularity means increased visibility, and a subsequent uptick in security concerns — especially when it comes to big name newcomers like Clark — has Englebert reconsidering her previous decision.
WNBA Players Association president Nneka Ogwumike called the move "transformational," and credited the WNBPA as well as the league for its implementation.
"Our league is growing, the demand for women's basketball is growing," Ogwumike told ESPN. "That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.
"Chartering flights not only is a safety measure, the biggest thing, and then obviously what it means to be able to play a game and go home and rest and recover and be the elite athletes that we try to be every single night when we step out onto this court."
Aces coach Becky Hammon called the immediate response to the charter announcement "great" but noted that there are still kinks to be worked out.
"What it all looks like, we’re still gathering information, we don’t know," she said Tuesday.
Several players emphasized the importance of safety, highlighting how last season the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner was harassed in an airport while traveling commercial.
"All these players and these faces are becoming so popular that it really is about that as much as it as about recovery," Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said.
"Above everything else, I think it's the safety of our players," Mercury player Natasha Cloud added. "We have a prime example with BG on our team that needs to be safe. At airports, it's like a madhouse. You see Caitlin Clark walking through airports, people following her, people trying to touch her, get pictures with her. It's just a safety measure, through and through. You would never have an NBA team walk through an airport."
Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the league had said it would charter flights for the playoffs and back-to-back games via a program introduced last year. The latest news, however, promises that teams will also be provided charters to and from all regular season games.
"Our safety is being taken seriously now, finally. In no world should our security not be a priority," Griner told ESPN. "If we want to be the league that we want to be and have the respect that we have, it comes with some risks. Sometimes people want to get close to you and it's not people you want, so I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore."
The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.
"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human."
She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.
"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.
In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.
"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen."
She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.
"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.
"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."
Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.
While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."
Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.
"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."
Brittney Griner’s number will finally hang in the rafters at Baylor University, with the school announcing Monday that they will retire her No. 42 on Feb. 18.
The Phoenix Mercury star, who was also the No. 1 pick in the 2013 WNBA draft, twice led Baylor to the Final Four during her college career. She helped lead the team to a perfect 40-0 national championship season during her junior year and left as one of the most decorated athletes in school history.
Professionally, Griner is a 10-year WNBA veteran with the Mercury, where she won the 2014 WNBA title. She’s also won two Olympic gold medals.
A Houston native, she played at Baylor from 2009 to 2013. She still holds the NCAA record for blocked shots (748). She also sat at No. 4 on the career scoring list with 3,283 points up until recently, when she was surpassed by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark.
“I’m honored to return home to Baylor and celebrate where so much of my journey started,” Griner said Monday in a statement. “I’m grateful to Coach Nicki [Collen] and the entire Baylor community and am looking forward to the opportunity to be back on campus, spend time with the team and have my family beside me to share in this incredible moment. Sic ’em Bears.”
A reportedly strained relationship with former Baylor coach Kim Mulkey had previously hung over the question as to why Griner’s jersey had yet to be retired. In the time since she played at Baylor, the numbers of Odyssey Sims, Melissa Jones and Nina Davis have all been retired.
Mulkey, during her time at Baylor, said that it was a requirement for a player to have graduated in order for their jersey to be retired. Griner finished her degree at Baylor in 2019.
Mulkey left the Bears in 2021 to take over at LSU. Nicki Collen, who took over, said that it was one of her goals to get Griner’s number retired. Hopes that it would happen during the 2021-22 season were overshadowed by Griner’s imprisonment in Russia.
Griner was released in December 2022, and returned to the WNBA in 2023. When Griner and Phoenix played at Dallas last June, Collen and the entire Baylor women’s program attended the game.
At the time, Collen reiterated her and the program’s commitment to honoring Griner.
“I have been saying this since I arrived at Baylor that she deserves to have her jersey retired and I wanted to make sure that happened when the timing was right,” Collen said in a statement. “With the opening of Foster Pavilion, and the WNBA offseason fitting into our season, this seemed like the right time to honor Brittney and welcome her back home.
“She is one of the best basketball players in Baylor’s history, and we’re thrilled that the time has come to celebrate Brittney and all of her accomplishments.”
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark moved into fourth place on the NCAA women’s basketball career scoring list on Tuesday, passing former Baylor standout Brittney Griner.
Clark scored a game-high 32 points and a team-high six 3-pointers in No. 2 Iowa’s 96-50 win over Wisconsin. She now has 3,306 total points for her career. She entered the game with 3,274 points and needed just 10 to pass Griner.
“It’s just hard for me to wrap my head around,” Clark said postgame when asked about her impact on the sport. “I’m just trying to stay in the moment and enjoy every single second of it. We understand how special and cool it is – what we’re doing for the game and for the state of Iowa and really for people around the country.
“It just shows how much the women’s game is starting to grow and how many people are starting to fall in love with it, especially our team.”
In her career at Iowa, Clark has scored in double digits in every game except one, a game against Northwestern her freshman year.
Next on the scoring list is Jackie Stiles, who had 3,393 points for Missouri State from 1997 to 2001. After that is Kelsey Mitchell (3,402) before Plum, who holds the record with 3,527 points during her time at Washington.
With an average of 31 points per game, Clark could overtake Plum as early as the second or third week of February. Iowa next plays No. 18 Ohio State on Sunday on the road.
“We know we’re going to have our hands full there, breaking the press and taking care of the ball,” Clark said. “But also, there’s so many weapons on the floor, being able to guard at all five positions is key for us.”
A new tell-all about the circumstances surrounding Brittney Griner’s detainment and arrest in Russia was released by ESPN on Friday, with Courtney Vandersloot revealing new details about the circumstances surrounding her teammate’s arrest and the immediate aftermath.
Griner declined to be interviewed in the article, although ESPN’s TJ Quinn spoke with a number of people close to the Phoenix Mercury star, including Vandersloot.
Following Griner’s arrest on Feb. 17, Griner’s Ekaterinburg teammates reported for practice on the 18th. Griner was absent, which wasn’t odd at first.
“It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone came late,” Vandersloot, who was Griner’s teammate in Russia for four seasons, told ESPN. “We all talked about it like, ‘OK, BG’s not here. We’ll see her tomorrow or the next day.'”
Both Vandersloot and her teammates said they were aware of rising tensions between the US and Russia, but felt safe returning to play in Russia because of the relationship between team owners and the Kremlin.
“We’re all hearing it because we’re reading American news and Western news in general, that Europeans are just as concerned, but whenever we brought it up to Russians, it was like, ‘Oh, this is normal. They’re always threatening this. You don’t understand, we’ve been living like this for 10 years,'” Vandersloot said. “It’s constantly, ‘We’re about to go to war.’ They were always downplaying it.”
Griner’s initial absence from practice wasn’t cause for alarm. Jonquel Jones, Griner’s closest friend on the team, didn’t know what was happening, but did tell teammates that Griner wasn’t responding to her. Vandersloot, as well as her wife and teammate Allie Quigley, was convinced that something was going on when it became clear that Griner wasn’t responding to any of her teammate’s texts.
“Allie asked [Griner’s] translator, ‘Where is BG?’ And she was really uncomfortable,” Vandersloot said. “You just knew something was up and she was just kind of trying to play it off.”
Five days later, on Feb. 23, the team was informed of Griner’s arrest by general manager Maxim Rybakov.
“He started the meeting with, like, ‘We have some serious issues to discuss.’ So we knew it was big and it probably had to do with BG,” Vandersloot said. “His face — he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“He said, ‘We wanted you guys to all know that she’s been arrested for drugs.’ I feel like he even said, ‘a big amount of drugs.’ It was like a punch to the stomach. We all were like, we could throw up at any time as soon as we heard. I was like, no. No way. There has to be a mistake.”
Vandersloot said she was “so worried” about Griner being in jail, and couldn’t explain the feelings she was having. The team also had to go out and play a game right after being told.
“I can’t even explain the feeling I had in my stomach after that because I was so worried about BG being in jail,” she said. “I couldn’t even grasp that — how scared she must be, how lonely she must be. Those were the conversations we were having — I can’t believe that she’s in there. Now we have to go freaking play a game? You think we care about this game? All we’re worried about was our teammate, our friend. I remember not paying attention to the damn game at all.”
The assumption was that Griner would be released soon, that she “was a phone call away from being released.” Griner was especially popular in Russia. One teammate, Yevgenia Belyakova, noted that “everyone loves her.”
Of course, the reality was much different. It took almost a year for Griner to be released from Russian detainment.
Players on the team were told Griner was arrested for a “big amount of drugs.” But when Griner’s American teammates found out the true amount – which was no more than two vape cartridges – it was a relief.
Still, there was tension between the Russians and the Americans on the team, who didn’t understand how big of a deal drug possession was in the country.
“We were fighting against each other. I’m Russian, and I tried to explain why she really broke rules in Russia, why it is so difficult to do this,” Belyakova said. “I tried to explain to them how it works in Russia. It was me against everybody.”
“It wasn’t just her — it was all the other Russians, even the translator,” Vandersloot said. “It was almost like they were saying, ‘These are the rules,’ and we were like, ‘We don’t give a damn what the rules were.'”
Team owners also couldn’t do anything, because of the quantity of drugs.
“I remember them emphasizing this to us: ‘There’s nothing we can do because of the amount.’ I was like, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Vandersloot said. “Then I heard how much [the amount was] on the news. I was like, ‘Wow, this is what they were talking about? What a big amount is?’ I kind of lost confidence in their ability to impact this.”
On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. Players were then advised to leave the country. One by one, foreign players opted to leave. Vandersloot said that it was hard knowing that they were leaving Griner behind.
“Do you know how s—ty that feels? How hard it is that we’re leaving, but we’re leaving something so important to us behind?” Vandersloot said. “It was so early we thought we were going to get out and then she’d be right behind us. We knew BG would want us to get out and be safe; that was definitely a discussion. But how do we just take off and go?”
Read the full ESPN report here, on the one-year anniversary of Griner’s release.