Lexie Brown contradicts WNBA leadership, claiming active involvement and understanding of negotiations. This starkly contrasts with other top players' accounts.
Two days after Kelsey Plum and Breanna Stewart wrote that they had been left out of the WNBA's collective bargaining process for the better part of 17 months, a fellow WNBA player pushed back — and her account of the same process reads almost nothing like theirs.
Lexie Brown, one of only two veteran players currently under contract in the entire league, posted on Threads Wednesday that "we (the players who decide to get on the calls) speak to the PA and are updated often" and that she is "extremely well informed and prepared for any situation that comes from these negotiations."
Brown's post arrived the same day the WNBPA's executive committee released a joint statement, signed by Plum and Stewart along with the other five members, declaring the union "united" and the league's latest proposal "not worth taking."
The contrast between Brown's experience and the one described by Plum and Stewart in their Monday letter, obtained by ESPN, is striking. The two executive committee members wrote that despite the WNBPA opting out of the previous CBA in October 2024, they had been "privy to details of these negotiations for less than two months, having first seen a proposal in January."
They said they had "repeatedly" asked PA staff for information without receiving it and that players who raise concerns are made to feel as though they are "acting against the interests of the PA."
Brown is not a member of the executive committee. Plum is the union's first vice president. Stewart is a vice president. The two hold leadership positions specifically designed to keep them informed and to serve as a bridge between union staff and the broader membership.
That dynamic — rank-and-file players feeling well-informed while elected leadership says it has been kept in the dark — is unusual and points to a structural question about how information flows inside the WNBPA. If the union's regular communication channels are functioning well enough that Brown feels fully prepared, why did two of the seven members of the executive committee feel the need to write a three-page letter demanding basic financial data they said they had never received?
The answers are not yet public. The WNBPA declined to comment when reached by ESPN on the contents of the letter. Jackson shared the letter with the full executive committee on Tuesday, and the union held an all-player call that evening to address the issues it raised, along with the results of a player survey showing 84% of respondents opposed to accepting the league's current offer.
Whether the all-player call resolved the information disputes raised by Plum and Stewart — or simply produced the unified public statement that followed — remains unclear. The March 10 deadline for a CBA term sheet is days away, with the 2026 regular season scheduled to begin May 8.