00:00Big news coming out of the W. Kathy Engelbert is out. The WNBA's first ever commissioner announced this morning that
00:07she's retiring at the end of the season.
00:09Now that's seven years after taking the job and after a stretch where a lot of people around the league
00:16would call, let's say, Rocky, to put it kindly.
00:21I mean, let's be real about what this tenure really looked like. The officiating complaints, well, those never got fixed.
00:27Nafisha Collier called her leadership negligent and said the WNBA had the worst leadership in the world.
00:34And even the credit for the $3 billion media rights deal, a lot of that credit has gone to Adam
00:40Silver, not her.
00:41But if we're going to give some credit where credit is due, player salaries did top $1 million for the
00:48first time under her CBA with a real revenue sharing model tying player pay to league growth.
00:55And she got the league through COVID with the Wubble keeping the season alive when, let's be honest, a lot
01:02of leagues couldn't do that.
01:03The WNBA also expanded to more franchises under her than at any point in history.
01:09But the Engelbert era officially ends at the end of this season.
01:13And although controversial, it is still somewhat productive.
01:17Now, the real question is, who's walking into this next and can they actually fix what she couldn't?
01:25It's hard to say.
01:25I'm an Ajax.
01:25I don't need to be speaking.
