Nneka Ogwumike reveals ‘first thing’ she would change as WNBA commissioner
· Yahoo Sports
Nneka Ogwumike laid out her top priority for leading the WNBA, should she be appointed as the next commissioner.
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As speculation grows around who will replace Cathy Engelbert as WNBA commissioner, WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike has emerged as a serious candidate in the conversation.
Ogwumike is set to retire from playing at the end of the 2026 season, wrapping up a hall-of-fame 15-year career. Having served as union president since 2016, she has already helped redefine league history with the collective bargaining agreements that dramatically boosted player pay and benefits.
Though she admitted she’d need to learn the business side and joked about taking a long vacation first, Ogwumike hasn’t closed the door on executive leadership.
Nneka Ogwumike wants pensions changed in the WNBA
As a WNBA player, Nneka Ogwumike experiences things that your average WNBA commissioner candidate won’t on a day-to-day basis.
Talking to Matt Barnes on The Shop YouTube channel, Ogwumike brought up the issue of pensions and how the WNBA is so far behind where the NBA on that front.
She said: “So, I would say especially after coming off of these negotiations, like assuming we’re in the position to do it, create some type of pension plan. That’s probably the first thing.
“We just got to like reimbursement up to a certain amount. Like it’s not great. And also too like to put things into perspective like we’re in this era where like for example we are further ahead than where the NBA was 30 years into their league.
“And I don’t think people really understand that yes, we have history, but like it’s not that far off, you know, and we’re still living in a world that they built. And so to not be able to give back in a more meaningful way to me, maybe it’s because I was raised on a lot of those legends. Like it it makes me feel a type of way.”
While the WNBA is blowing up like never before, player pay is also still nowhere near the NBA. The new collective bargaining agreement bumped the WNBA supermax up to around $1.4 million, but when you put that next to NBA max deals pushing past $50 million, it’s clear there’s still a massive gap to bridge.
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