Gabby Williams weighs in on WNBA’s CBA negotiations

At the top of the list are the ongoing CBA negotiations with the WNBA. Williams didn’t mince words when making her position clear: the W doesn’t want players in Unrivaled, AU Pro Basketball or playing overseas.

“These leagues pay us more,” Williams told The Next. “That’s obviously why they don’t want to stay in these leagues.”

On top of that, she continued, the WNBA is trying to play hard ball. “You can see that the league is trying to push the season [by adding games] — I think it’s on purpose to counteract with these other leagues as well as prioritization.”

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Williams, who is also a member of the French National Team and in her first season in the W since 2022, is comfortably an outspoken critic of the WNBA’s prioritization rule, which requires players to place the most career emphasis on the WNBA’s schedule. That rule is why Julie Vanloo was on a flight so soon after Belgium won this year’s EuroBasket tournament, and it’s also why Williams has opted to play in Turkey the last few years.

“It’s very clear they want to remove all these other leagues,” Williams also said, specifically referring to Unrivaled, the professional 3×3 league spearheaded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart. Unrivaled hosted its inaugural season in Miami this year.

“Maybe not remove them,” Williams clarified, “but keep us far from them without paying us more than these leagues pay us … I just think there’s a little bit of delusion in the W.”

Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell, for his part, doesn’t view the league’s existence as being in conflict with the WNBA.

“I just see ourselves as such an additive to the space that it’s always confused us why people would think that it’s a conflict of interest,” Bazzell told The Next.

“My job is to continue to build that bridge towards the WNBA and towards team owners because they’ve been so supportive for us as we built this thing from the ground up.”

Overseas basketball provides more opportunities than ever before

Playing overseas has long afforded WNBA athletes the opportunity to expand their own seasons and make money while doing so. The relationship between WNBA athletes and overseas teams is symbiotic, and basketball in France and Australia in particular has grown in recent years — and to Williams’ point, that’s a reality that might end up keeping more athletes from those countries at home, especially if the WNBA can’t (or won’t) meet salaries they can earn elsewhere.

“It’s just amazing and beautiful to see how [basketball] is growing in France,” Williams said. “I think having the Paris Olympics helped a lot … it showed us that it could really be a powerhouse [hub] for the sport.”

France has enjoyed enormous success in recent NBA and WNBA drafts. Victor Wembanyama electrified the NBA stratosphere when he was selected as the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA’s 2024 Draft, and Dominique Malonga did the same for the WNBA when she was chosen as the No. 2 overall pick this year.

This story was updated to include comment from Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell.