The WNBA is reportedly looking to move up the start of its season as part of its collective bargaining negotiations.
WNBA owners are proposing an earlier start to the regular season that could overlap with the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and result in “rookies arriving weeks into the season,” according to Annie Costabile of Front Office Sports. No WNBA season has begun before the month of May.
An earlier start could also put the WNBA season in conflict with the yet-to-debut “Project B,” the international basketball barnstorming tour that was initially linked to LeBron James‘ business partner Maverick Carter and separately to the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. (A league co-founder said last month that it is not receiving Saudi money.)
But while much of those initial reports focused on men’s basketball — and the possibility, however faint, of the new league poaching NBA players like James and Nikola Jokic — Project B has thus far made considerable progress in attracting talent from the women’s game.
Project B has already announced commitments from prominent WNBA players, including union president Nneka Ogwumike and fellow all-stars Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones, Jewell Loyd and Kelsey Mitchell.
Under the current WNBA schedule, those players could compete in the November-April Project B season without missing any WNBA obligations. But if the WNBA season were to begin as early as March, those players could risk suspension from the league under the prioritization rules put in place during the prior CBA. Those rules require that veteran players competing in other leagues report to WNBA training camp on time or risk a full-season suspension.
ESPN reported last month that prioritization had yet to play into the current negotiations, though one imagines that any effort to change the league schedule would necessarily raise the importance of that issue.
The WNBA CBA was originally set to expire at the end of October, but after an initial 30-day extension and subsequent 40-day extension, it now runs through January 9.
