As she works her way back from injury, the New York Liberty star chops it up with Boardroom about the ways she is still leading the WNBA off the court.
As one of the greatest women’s basketball players to ever live, Breanna Stewart is not one for excuses. On a quiet August Friday afternoon, the New York Liberty superstar has missed two weeks of action from a bone bruise in her right knee that’s kept her out since July 26. Stewart reportedly hopes to return in time for her 31st birthday on Aug. 27, but by the time the defending WNBA champions play Washington on the 28th, she’d have missed 15 games.
The three-time W champion, two-time MVP, two-time Finals MVP, and seven-time All-Star had previously missed just two total regular-season games since signing with the Liberty from the Seattle Storm following the 2022 season. The WNBA schedule expanded from 40 to 44 games this season for the first time, without changing the regular season’s start and end dates, which remain unchanged.
“The most important issue in the WNBA is looking at how crazy and condensed our schedule is,” Stewart told Boardroom in promoting her partnership with Ally, the presenting sponsor of the recently completed Rivals Week in the W. “And you see the fatigue, you see the injury setting in. So, I want the league to be a little bit smarter with the schedule, making more days off in between or things like that. Just making it make sense a little bit more.”
A source close to the league told Boardroom that the injury rate in 2025 is nearly identical to 2024 rates through the same number of days and games. The rate of back-to-backs is down from years past, and the cadence of games per week only up slightly from two years ago during the most recent non-Olympic season.
The league also expanded the playoff format this year, making the Finals a best-of-seven series for the first time ever. Yet, the last possible Finals date this season is Oct. 19, when it was Oct. 20 a year ago in an Olympic year. Stewart said she’d be okay with lengthening the season to start in April and ending later in October as long as salaries increase to reflect that.
“There’s more games on both ends, and it’s still ending earlier,” she continued. “How is that possible? And we can’t have more than 12 players, and some teams have only 11 because of the salary cap.”
As Stewie and the Liberty look to repeat as WNBA champions, staying healthy and keeping the main thing the main thing are the two biggest keys the 6-foot-4 forward mentioned. New York is 5-6 since Stewart’s injury and is .500 over its last 24 games as various players have missed time due to injury. And in an odd scheduling quirk, Tuesday marked the Liberty’s third game in 10 days against the Minnesota Lynx, who took New York to a fifth and deciding game in last year’s Finals and are currently running away with the league’s best regular-season record.
Minnesota, longtime playoff rival the Las Vegas Aces, and original W franchise Los Angeles Sparks were the Liberty’s three Rivals Week opponents, making the Lynx the closest geographical rival, according to the league, at 1,200 miles. Perhaps the Connecticut Sun, Stewart said, could be a rival despite their struggles this season. The UConn legend also suggested Philadelphia will be a good rival as well when it enters the league as an expansion team in 2030.
As Stewart pondered W rivalries, she was also planning for the second season of Unrivaled, which took the sports world by storm last winter as a sustainable, profitable, and entertaining way to keep women’s pro basketball relevant all year long.
“People just want to be able to find their favorite players in the United States and watch them throughout an entire year,” Stewart said, “not just for six or seven months in the WNBA. Ally was our founding partner of Unrivaled, and now for them to be in the WNBA just shows that they’re really trying to make an impact across the sport as a whole. What they stand for and their 50/50 rule and making sure that they equally invest in women’s and men’s sports is really inspiring.”
For Unrivaled Season 2, Stewart said fans are now going to know what to expect in terms of game style and pace, and more of the W’s biggest stars will be part of the action. She said to expect a bigger atmosphere at games for fans, plus the potential for some games to be played next season in different cities outside its custom-built Miami arena. The league became so popular that people are bringing it up to her almost every day.
“I was literally just talking to my grandma today and she was like, ‘I’m coming back down to Miami because I love Unrivaled,'” she said. “People just tell me thank you and that they have the Unrivaled gear. There was just quality product happening there.”
Other than Ally, Stewart singled out her quality partnerships with Delta and Puma, the latter of which pioneered the current wave of signature women’s basketball shoes with the Stewie 1 in 2021.
“There’s a lot of dominoes that have fallen since then,” she said, as Puma promotes the newest Stewie 4 model. “Puma wasn’t afraid to try, and it was right before the sport really exploded and is getting the eyes and viewership that it is now. They were willing to share my story and appreciate what I’ve done for the sport, and helping me bridge the gap between the fans and the younger generation, which was really cool. It’s crazy what the Stewie 1 release jump-started.”
Liberty teammate Sabrina Ionescu‘s signature Nike shoe has been one of the Swoosh’s most successful signature launches in recent memory. Angel Reese is playing a major role in leading Reebok‘s resurgence. The Swoosh is also getting rave reviews for A’ja Wilson‘s new signature model, with Caitlin Clark rumored to soon get one of her own. Stewie said players who deserve a signature shoe include her Unrivaled co-founder, Napheesa Collier, Paige Bueckers, Alyssa Thomas, and JuJu Watkins.
For the last several months, even as she’s on the mend from her current injury, Stewart has put a considerable amount of physical and mental effort into fighting and advocating for what WNBA players deserve. As a Vice President of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, Stewie has been on the front lines of the players union’s contentious negotiations with the league on a new collective bargaining agreement, with the current CBA expiring on Oct. 31. A member of the executive committee, she said she’s making sure she’s in the room at all times to provide the player perspective to the league and its board of governors while keeping her fellow players on the same page.
“We know that we’re not going to settle for anything less than what we deserve,” Stewart said. “And I don’t know what that’s going to turn into, because negotiations haven’t been that great as of late. But hopefully they’ll start moving a little bit quicker. I wouldn’t be shocked if it goes past the deadline just because right now we’re putting ourselves in a tough position to have to get through everything in two months, and we want to do it the right way.”
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Doing things the right way, Stewart said, was about being on the same page, ensuring they know what they want and not budging until they get it. She’s hopeful that the league will ultimately understand the players’ value and worth, given the league’s rapid growth, including reports that the Sun recently agreed to sell the team for a league record $325 million.
“When you see Connecticut potentially getting sold for that much money, the franchise fees that teams are paying just to come into this league, the TV deals,” she said, “there’s a desire to be a part of what we have here, and people are putting their money behind it. We just need the league to do that [for us] as well.”
In anticipation of major pay increases in the next CBA, more than half the league, including Stewie, worked out contracts that expire after this season. It’s setting up, many believe, to be the wildest offseason of free agency in WNBA history, assuming a CBA gets worked out in time.
“Free agency is gonna be wild,” she said. “I’m sure there’s going to be tons of movement, a lot more money on the table, and I can’t wait. I’m excited to see what happens.”
But for now, as we hit late August and the stretch run of the regular season, Stewie is focused on getting back to the court in full health for the stretch run of the regular season while trying to ensure that off the court, W players sign a deal that sets them up for a prosperous and lucrative future that recognizes the league’s monumental growth.
Because there’s no excuse for Stewart, the Liberty, or the WNBPA to back down now without a fight.
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