After Staging Player Draft, WNBA Faces Task of Starting Season With COVID-19 Pandemic Hovering Over Pro Sports
By Cassandra Cousineau for LVSportsBiz.com
This week’s WNBA Draft gave sports fans — especially Las Vegas Aces fans here in Las Vegas — something to root for amid the month-long shut down of live sports events because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An elaborate stage presented by ESPN was swapped out for the tidy home office of WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert, who had confessed that player jerseys were displayed on her personal sweater drying racks.
The league still has a myriad of unanswered questions to deal with because of the worldwide coronavirus that claimed the lives of more than 35,000 Americans. For professional women’s basketball in this country, teams were at least able to get a first crack at newly available players to fill a roster spot for the upcoming season – whenever that season starts.
That season and WNBA venues include the Mandalay Bay Events Center, home of the Aces. After a run of three number one picks in a row the past three years, the Las Vegas Aces didn’t get on the WNBA draft board until the 33rd player was available.
With that selection, the Aces snatched up six-foot, one-inch forward Lauren Manis from Holy Cross. The Patriot League standout was named to the First-Team All-Patriot League in each of her last three seasons, and made the conference All-Defensive Team as a senior.
“I am so thankful and humbled to be selected by the Las Vegas Aces,” Manis said in a release from Holy Cross. “This is a dream come true, and I can’t wait to meet the rest of the Aces family. Thank you to the Holy Cross community for all the love and support during my four years.”
Defensively, Manis fits right in with Aces coach Bill Laimbeer’s intrepid style. The native of Franklin, Mass. ranked third in the Patriot League with 27 blocks, and averaged 8.6 defensive boards per game — ranking fifth in Division I.
Manis will join the Aces’ previous number one selections — guard Kelsey Plum, power forward A’ja Wilson and guard Jackie Young.
Unlike Manis, all three were well-known names to women’s college basketball fans. Manis averaged a double-double the past two seasons, including 18.6 PPG and 11.5 RPG as a senior in the Patriot League. Manis is the first basketball player, male or female, to ever score 2,000 points and haul in 1,000 rebounds for Holy Cross.
In the hours before the broadcast, WNBA Commish Englebert hosted a call for media. She revealed the league’s broadcast format for the ESPN-hosted draft.
But all of that was quickly dwarfed by the pandemic in the room — and how the WNBA was going to attempt to play a season in the shadow of the COVID-19 virus impacts in pro sports.
“We’re going to help our team owners and our teams and many of which are experiencing significant disruption as a result of the crisis,” Englebert said.
Las Vegas was singled out as being one of those markets with unique challenges. “We have two owners who you would have thought wouldn’t have been on a list who now obviously have been impacted because they’re in casino markets, MGM and Mohegan Sun. You see how this has impacted them,” she observed.
The delay of the WNBA’s 24th season comes at a critical time for the league. After last season saw an increase in viewership especially on digital platforms from 2018, the WNBA and its players’ union reached a groundbreaking eight-year labor deal that increased players’ salaries and improved their benefits.
Normally, players are set to receive their first checks after training camp, closer to the first game of the season. Even with the new contracts and increase in the leagues minimum salary, most rookies may not receive that salary in the near future. The league’s minimum salary for inexperienced players in the new CBA increased to $57,000, and for more experienced players, $68,000. In 2019, players with two years experience (or less) earned as little as $41,965, and players with three or more years experience, $56,375.
“Some would say women’s sports are already at a disadvantage. We had a lot of momentum coming into this year which is why I still have a level of optimism but this is a business,” Englebert said.
WNBA training camps were scheduled to open April 26, and the season was supposed to start May 15.
“With or without fans, one site, multiple sites, in our arenas, not in our arenas,” Engelbert said. “At neutral sites, at sites where maybe there isn’t as much exposure.” The commissioner was non-committal when Las Vegas was mentioned as a possible location for an in-season tournament to make up games.
“We’re doing a lot of analysis. This is why it’s called scenario planning. We’re leveraging all of the resources we have with the NBA and the WNBA. We could innovate around different formats. We probably won’t end up with one scenario; we’ll end up with maybe employing multiple ones,” she said.
The WNBA had already built into its 2020 schedule a break from July 11 to Aug. 13 to account for the Tokyo Olympics. With the games being postponed until 2021, the commissioner noted it’s possible for games to now be played during that time.
Entering her ninth month on the job, Engelbert referenced her challenging time at the helm. “I left a job where I was accountable for 100,000 people. I thought this would be easier.”
As for when the 2020 WNBA season might kick off, Englebert said, “Our goal is to have a season when it is medically advisable and feasible.”
She noted, “Other than deferring training camp and the beginning of the season, we haven’t taken anything in our scenario plan off the table.”
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