The WNBA’s bubble season reverberates five years later

It can be argued that what we are all experiencing now in the WNBA, the national exposure, the television ratings, the sponsors, the Caitlin Clark phenomenon, the expansion of the league in Golden State and next season in Portland and Toronto, the preparation for a game-changing collective bargaining agreement – none of it happens if the league can’t pull off a season in isolation in Florida and if the players don’t agree to come into a never-been-done-before environment, to bring their families and subject themselves to rigorous testing and claustrophobic living conditions in order to play.

“That season was a lot bigger than any of us as players and bigger than the league,” said Seattle Storm forward Alysha Clark. “Where we are as a league right now, honestly, is because we did that.”

The 22-game regular-season schedule that the players endured at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida in the summer of 2020, was played with no fans in the stands. And in most cases without the physical presence of friends and family. The players sat six-feet apart in folding chairs on the “bench” while sharing a hotel facility that kept them separate from the world, but joined together in ways that still reverberate.

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The season was played against the backdrop of tens of thousands of COVID deaths and the national upheaval caused by the murders of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and the death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville police. The players agreed to dedicate their season to social justice activism, to use their platform to center women of color.

“For us to be able to stand together in that moment and to use that platform to raise awareness and change the conversation was super important,” Clark said. “I think that moment is the reason why so many people are here now, the investors, these new teams. They have seen how powerful this league is, how powerful the women of the league are.”

Without the WNBA’s ability to stage a season in 2020, to stay in the national consciousness, and to become the nation’s conscience in many ways, it’s safe to say the league is not in such a healthy space half a decade later.

“I totally agree,” said Sue Bird. “There’s no question. We were able to have a season and we were able to be on television more than usual because there weren’t any sports on television. We were there because we wanted to make a statement about social activism, but we also had a great product.”

By the end of the summer of 2020, the quality of the product and the players’ commitment to activism would position the league and its players in a way the league had not previously experienced.

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“Given the circumstances, we needed to do something and we made it work the best way we could,” said Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the WNBA Players Association. “I think we didn’t know what it was going to look like. So for us to be able to put out a product like that, to have a season, to have a champion and be able to use our numbers to mobilize the way we did, it was a one-of-one situation.”

The WNBA players have been lauded for keeping a spotlight on the issues of police brutality and structural racism during that pivotal summer. In an election year, they advocated for the election of Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, and when Warnock won, the WNBA was credited for being the catalyst.

All the while, the product on the floor – a compelling season that ended with a Seattle championship – got exposure in front of a sports-starved nation.

And it might not have happened if the players hadn’t agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the league in January of 2020 – just as the impact of the coronavirus was beginning to be felt globally.

The agreement was a groundbreaking moment for the league in and of itself, including significant salary increases, enhanced benefits (including family planning options), expanded career development opportunities and a more liberal free agency system that has created a level of excitement around the league still enduring five years later. With that CBA as a foundation, the players’ union is preparing to meet the league at the negotiating table again at the end of the season, an agreement expected to significantly improve salaries and benefits for the players thanks to new sponsors and a new media rights deal.

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“Opting out and negotiating the 2020 agreement – something that had never been done before – gave our players courage and energy and commitment,” said WNBAPA Executive Director Terri Jackson. “We negotiated the strictest health protocols across sport and probably any working environment.”

Equally important to the players was that they were paid 100 percent of their salaries for the bubble season, something that did not happen in the NBA or the MLB as they came back to play their own limited schedules.

Jackson credited the players for being willing to enter an environment that was as physically and mentally challenging as any of them had ever experienced. And the basketball was only a piece of it.

“That was how voter registration got done, how full census completion got done,” Jackson said. “Advocacy at 100 percent for those initiatives and connecting it to the ‘Say Her Name’ campaign, that advocacy energy is what led the players to get informed and mobilized around COVID vaccines to become the first full vaxxed league. VOTE (Rafael) WARNOCK shirts happen because 144 players are together, talking 24-7. They literally changed history.”

History that has long legs. Before the 2024 NCAA championship game between Iowa and South Carolina, a game that would pull higher television ratings than the men’s NCAA title game for the first time in history, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert credited the WNBA’s bubble season for setting the league and women’s basketball in general into a more prosperous future.

A thriving WNBA makes it possible for players such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers to continue to build their own legacies and careers as professionals.

“We might not have survived if we couldn’t pull off the bubble season,” Englebert said. “It was important for our sponsors and our media partners for us to be able to move forward.”

Both Alysha Clark and Ogwumike agree, but they also remember the cost. And they don’t want others to forget it.

“I don’t think I remember it fondly,” Alysha Clark said. “It was heavy emotionally and mentally for a lot of us. But finishing that season, finishing on top, is something I will forever be proud of because of the weight we carried every day in that bubble.”

“A lot of people come up to me and talk to me about how inspired they felt with what we did’” Ogwumike said. “But personally, it was not easy.”