The murmurs of Unrivaled heading on a downward spiral were put to bed in Philadelphia. The 3-on-3 league co-founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart drew a crowd of 21,490. It was the most-attended regular-season women’s pro basketball game ever and the most-attended event ever at Xfinity Mobile Arena. It’s been a nerve-racking season 2 after a successful opening last year. However, Collier and Stewart’s college coach, Geno Auriemma, has made it clear that he doesn’t care about the numbers. 

“I don’t know if I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve seen enough that it’s different, right?” Auriemma said after their win over DePaul.

Auriemma was among the first investors in Unrivaled during its 2024 seed round, and the investment has since paid off. The league reached a valuation of $340 million in September 2025, with its revenue doubling over that span. Still, Auriemma has made his stance clear: his belief in the league stems from his trust in the players leading it rather than just the numbers.

“Now, somebody asked me one time about the names of all the teams and all this other stuff, and I’m like, “No, I don’t know all that stuff.” Or, “You’re an investor. Shouldn’t you know that?” Auriemma said, “No, I mean, I’m an investor in Apple, and I don’t know about how they make phones and all that stuff. So, I tell people that I invested in Stewie and Napheesa as people because I believe in them. And then I watch to see what it looks like, and it looks amazing.”

Well, that is certainly a unique comparison, but the essence is understood.

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Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier have known Auriemma for well more than a decade, and they played some of the best basketball under the legendary coach. In the 4 years at UConn, Stewart and Geno Auriemma won the 4 peat with the now-New York Liberty star being the best player in 3 of them. Collier came about as a freshman in 2015-16, during Stewart’s final year as a Husky. 

While Collier-Auriemma did not win any titles there on, the Minnesota Lynx star was a Wooden Awardee twice. Off the court, Auriemma has remained a consistent guide for each of the two through their WNBA careers. “So when you say, ‘What are all the qualities that you would want in someone to be an example, to be a role model, to be a leader?’ You’d be hard-pressed to find somebody better than Phee,” Auriemma has said. The UConn coach often beams about Stewart as well.

Meanwhile, even as Unrivaled thrives, uncertainty still looms over the broader women’s basketball landscape due to the ongoing WNBA CBA negotiations.

As vice presidents of the players’ association, Stewart and Collier are standing firm on their demands in the conference room. “The closer it gets to WNBA season[…] we’re prepared to not play[…], but we want to play,” Stewart said after the three-hour meeting in New York. The WNBA’s proposal in early December would raise the cap to $5 million and the max salary to about $1.3 million in the first year of the deal. 

But the two parties still clash on the revenue-sharing percentage. The situation between the WNBPA and the WNBA is a deadlock. On the other hand, Geno Auriemma himself is facing a major financial change in college basketball. 

Geno Auriemma May Need the WNBA Blueprint as College Hoops Pushes for a CBA

Unlike the WNBA, money matters have rarely influenced college basketball. That is, until the NIL broke open the dam. Now the players are being paid in millions. Some are sticking around in college rather than going to the W because they earn more here. There are even players who have once been drafted in the NBA/WNBA returning to college basketball.

Unfortunately, Geno Auriemma has predicted an even darker picture. 

“The challenge is that you only have so much money. And other schools, if they have more money, have a better opportunity to get players. So, it’s basically professional sports, right? There are big market teams like the Dodgers, and they can just go buy any player they want,” he said. “And then there are teams like Milwaukee or Kansas City or whatever that are in a different scenario. I think college sports is going to be it going to be is exactly like that.”

College basketball could become pay-to-win, despite being amateur at face value. That is why many, including Auriemma, are suggesting a simple solution: To remove that veil of amateurism. Coaches want a proper CBA so the NCAA can control the competition and enforce some hard and fast rules.

As the most recent significant CBA conversation, the WNBA will have an impact on the new order if the NCAA decides to go that way.