NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Alysha Clark needs to finish the narrative that Athletes Limitless and Unmatched pits girls’s basketball gamers towards each other. Or that having two professional leagues forces gamers into an both or determination.
Clark believes the leagues are merely offering extra offseason alternatives to play basketball nearer to residence in an effort to complement their WNBA salaries.
“It addresses the problems that we have had as gamers for thus a few years,” Clark mentioned. “All of us have needed to go abroad and sacrifice time away from household and associates to make a dwelling … However now there are alternatives.”
That is Clark’s first season with Athletes Limitless, which is in its fourth season general. The three-time WNBA champ could not be nearer to residence as a Tennessee highschool standout who performed first at Belmont, then Center Tennessee. Unmatched, in its first 12 months, debuted on Jan. 17 and to Clark, that league provides celebrity gamers an offseason possibility whereas Athletes Limitless gives alternative for different gamers eager to hone expertise in hopes of constructing — or protecting their spots — on WNBA rosters.
Having a number of skilled girls’s leagues to selected from within the U.S. as WNBA offseason choices is greater than many ladies may even dream about 15 years in the past.
“It’s stunning for our sport and I’m excited that I get to be part of it and assist spearhead that right here at residence and like hopefully create extra alternatives,” mentioned Clark, who needed to combat her method onto a WNBA roster after being lower her first two seasons. “It’d be wonderful that this continues to broaden and now gamers have many choices they usually’re all invested in the identical methods is what I hope it finally ends up coming all the way down to.”
Variations between Athletes Unlmited and Unmatched
Gamers within the four-team AU league will play 24 video games of 5-on-5 hoops in Nashville beginning Wednesday evening over the following month at Municipal Auditorium. Unmatched is 3-on-3 competitors with six groups taking part in 44 regular-season video games in Miami.
Three-time Olympian Kia Nurse selected AU as the higher possibility to assist her put together for the upcoming WNBA season with its full-sized courtroom. The tighter season additionally match higher into her schedule as a broadcast analyst for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors.
“This was the proper alternative, and it was an ideal time,” Nurse mentioned. “It’s solely a five-week season, so I don’t miss a ton of the Raptors video games. And so my bosses have been like, ‘Positive! Go do what it is advisable to do.’ And I’m like, ‘Nice!’ That is good for me.”
What number of gamers are in every league?
Athletes Limitless has 40 roster spots. Unmatched has 36. Meaning practically twice as many gamers can keep in america in the event that they select reasonably than go abroad to play ball.
“It’s rising the sport,” Nurse mentioned. “So on the finish of the day in case you’re turning on the TV you’re watching a girls’s basketball sport, whether or not it’s 5-on-5 or 3-on-3 we’re rising the sport and that’s vital as effectively.”
Different WNBA gamers on AU rosters embody Maddy Siegrist, Kiersten Bell, Sydney Colson, Alissa Pili and Lexie Brown, who has been with AU Professional Basketball from the beginning in Las Vegas in 2022. Gamers earn factors each for workforce wins and particular person performances with an enormous scoreboard alongside one facet of the courtroom protecting observe. Groups change weekly with the highest 4 gamers serving as captains and drafting rosters for arms’ on administration and training expertise.
The participant with probably the most factors on the finish of the season is the person champ. Earlier winners have been Tianna Hawkins, NaLyssa Smith and Allisha Grey.
What are participant salaries within the two leagues?
Megan Perry, AU’s director of basketball, would not talk about salaries besides to say their contracts are aggressive and differ to make sure the league attracts prime expertise. Unmatched has the highest common wage for gamers of any skilled girls’s sports activities league with many incomes six-figure salaries for the eight-week season with a mean wage of greater than $220,000 — near the WNBA’s most base wage.
The leagues might be in a battle for viewers on Fridays and Saturdays, when broadcasts of video games in every overlap. AU’s video games (on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) might be on ESPN+ together with the WNBA app and FanDuel Sports activities Community. Throughout one week of the AU season video games might be performed on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; throughout the remaining week the schedule might be Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Unmatched video games are broadcast Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays on TNT and Tru TV.
For Theresa Plaisance, who received a WNBA title in 2022 with the Las Vegas Aces, her third season with Athletes Limitless suits completely into the sports activities calendar.
“We love non-breakage in girls’s sports activities, so the truth that we do have this from time to time you fall proper into the March Insanity and you then go straight to the (WNBA) draft after which right here comes coaching camp … I personally love this,” Plaisance mentioned. “I believe that it labored out good.”
Gamers with Volunteer State roots
A few of gamers in AU have Tennessee ties. Isabelle Harrison is a Nashville native taking part in together with her sister, Dorie. They’ve 10 siblings, so loads of household and associates needs to be shopping for tickets. Harrison is one in every of three Girl Vols taking part in together with Jordan Horston who was a WNBA All-Rookie workforce member in 2023 with Seattle, and Meighan Simmons.
Athletes Limitless needed to be in Nashville due to Tennessee’s wealthy custom of ladies’s basketball. The league introduced final fall its determination to play this season within the Music Metropolis. Final week, officers introduced a bid to deliver a WNBA growth franchise to Nashville. How effectively followers end up for this girls’s professional league definitely might be observed by WNBA officers assessing bids for groups.
Gamers from Tennessee imagine followers will end up. Clark has seen it herself with individuals touring throughout Tennessee to look at good girls’s basketball.
Clark mentioned: “That’s the legacy that’s right here.”
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