August 14, 2025
Locked On Women’s Basketball: The WNBA returns to Canada this weekend
Chelsea Leite: 'This country is so excited to have more chances to watch basketball, to engage in the community'
On today’s episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Chelsea Leite previews this weekend’s WNBA Canada game, which will feature the Atlanta Dream and Seattle Storm at Rogers Arena in Vancouver. First, Leite talked about the significance of the game:
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“It’s the first regular season game in the WNBA that has been played internationally ever,” Leite said. “It’s a big deal for Canada, for Canadian basketball fans, this is such a rich basketball country, and it’s coast to coast, … last night, I was still in Toronto. I flew to Vancouver this morning, and there’s international basketball event happening there called [the] Global Jam Under 23 tournament. … the amount of people that showed up on a Wednesday night to see Canadian men’s and women’s hoops, there was a lot of people there for both games. And it just shows that this country is so excited to have more chances to watch basketball, to engage in the community. And this is what this game represents, as much as neither of these teams represent Vancouver as a city or Canada, these fans just love watching basketball, and so it’s exciting for them to be here.”
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“And there’s a lot of implications as well. I think you know the exhibition games: the first one was in Toronto in 2023, then in 2024 they went to Edmonton and had another game, and both of those were preseason exhibition games, which meant they were fun and it was a good preseason exercise for the players, but they didn’t mean anything for the season as a whole. And that meant sometimes players didn’t play. Sometimes, people were pulled near the end of the game, and it’s nice to … be able to see bench players … but at the same time, you want to see a fully competitive mid-season game with a lot of implications,” Leite continued.
Then, Atlanta Dream guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough joined the show for a sit-down interview covering a number of topics. Leite and Walker-Kimbrough spoke about the ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations:
“For me, it’s just kind of just staying as informed as possible,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “And I think that comes with just my maturity. Because I know when I was younger, I was just like, I mean, okay, where do I sign? And I know that it sounds ignorant, but, when I was just younger, I just didn’t know the importance of it. And as the game has grown, it’s super important, because … players, … we have a bigger voice now and it’s very visible … we’re looking at sold out arenas, you know, we’re having to move games to different arenas because [of] the support, we have different television deals and networking deals that are coming to fruition. And you know, for me, just personally as a player, just staying as informed as possible, tapping into our player [representatives], tapping into the different calls that we have with our league, is just super important for me and just having these different conversations with other players, you know, getting different perspectives … it’s just bigger than basketball, you know, … it’s also the business side of it as well. So for me, I’m still learning, and just also doing my part as a veteran, just trying to inform younger players.”
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Tune in to hear more about Friday’s game in Vancouver and more from Walker-Kimbrough about playing in the Canada game, playing for Dream head coach Karl Smesko, and more. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!
