Players left a crucial CBA meeting disappointed as the WNBA offered no counterproposal, fueling urgency with the 2026 season rapidly approaching.
The WNBA came to a long-anticipated labor meeting without a written response — and left players questioning the league’s urgency as the 2026 season clock continues to tick.
According to the New York Post, collective bargaining talks between the WNBA and the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association remain stalled after Monday’s in-person meeting in New York City ended without the league presenting a counterproposal.
The session marked the first face-to-face meeting between players and league officials in months and came nearly six weeks after the union submitted its most recent proposal on Christmas morning. With fewer than 100 days before the scheduled May 8 start of the 2026 season, players arrived expecting tangible movement. Instead, the league showed up without anything in writing.
That absence “set the tone early,” a source with knowledge of the situation told the New York Post.
Rather than negotiating specific terms, the two sides spent much of the meeting explaining their reasoning on various topics. While the direct dialogue was viewed as progress in one respect, it did not produce concrete outcomes. Both sides left with a shared understanding that it is now the league’s turn to formally respond.
Ahead of the meeting, Kelsey Plum had publicly framed the session as an opportunity for clarity.
She said she planned to “learn a lot.”
Instead, the meeting yielded little beyond reaffirming how far apart the sides remain.
One source told the New York Post that the WNBA did not believe the union’s most recent proposal warranted a response because it was “essentially unchanged” from prior submissions. However, that view was never directly communicated to the union before Monday’s meeting, according to sources cited in the report.
As a result, some within the WNBPA believed the long-awaited response would finally come during the meeting. It did not.
The optics of the delay are especially notable given the timeline. Training camps typically begin roughly three weeks before the season, placing a practical deadline around April 19. The longer negotiations remain unresolved, the more realistic it becomes that the season’s start date could be pushed back.
Player frustration has been visible publicly. During last summer’s All-Star weekend, stars including Sabrina Ionescu and Caitlin Clark wore shirts reading “Pay us what you owe us,” underscoring the growing disconnect between players and league leadership.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and league officials have maintained that negotiations require careful consideration. Still, from the union’s perspective, Monday represented a missed opportunity to regain momentum after more than a year of stalled talks.
Players opted out of the previous collective bargaining agreement roughly 16 months ago. Despite that, the New York Post reported that the two sides are no closer to a deal now than they were a month ago.
Following Monday’s meeting, the union left expecting a league response “soon,” though no specific timeline was set.
Neither side wants to delay the 2026 season. But as the calendar continues to close in, the absence of written progress has turned what was once a distant concern into an increasingly immediate one.