With less than 10 seconds remaining in Saturday’s highly anticipated season-opener between the Indiana Fever and Dallas Wings, which featured the last four No. 1 overall picks — Aliyah Boston (2023), Caitlin Clark (2024), Paige Bueckers (2025) and Azzi Fudd (2026) — Clark shook free and fired a 30-foot bomb that could have tied the game, but instead rimmed out.
After Bueckers stunningly missed two free throws down on the other end, the Fever had one last chance. This time, they used Clark as a decoy to free up Kelsey Mitchell, who was enjoying a 30-point night. Mitchell got a great look at her own deep 3, but it too would not go down.
The new-look Wings escaped with a thrilling 107-104 victory in the first season-opener in WNBA history in which both teams scored 100-plus points.
There’s so much you could discuss from such an awesome game: the Wings’ incredible offensive showing under new coach Jose Fernandez; how comfortable Arike Ogunbowale looked after a diastrous 2025; Fudd coming off the bench and only taking two shots; Jessica Shepard’s playmaking; Clark’s up-and-down return from an injury-riddled season, which included a brief scare to do a minor back issue; Mitchell picking up where she left off from her All-WNBA First Team campaign; Boston’s continued offensive growth.
But as I was watching this afternoon, I kept coming back to the same big-picture thought: thank God they got the collective bargaining agreement done.
This time two months ago, it was unclear whether the 2026 season would start on time, or even happen at all. After more than a year of negotiations, strike authorizations, verbal barbs, leaked internal documents and missed deadlines, the league and the players were running out of time to come to terms on a new CBA.
Finally, early in the morning of March 18, the two sides struck a deal. It came more than a week after the league’s initial drop dead date of March 10, and required more than 100 hours of in-person negotiation inside The Langham, a luxury hotel in Manhattan, and the NBA’s offices.
The seven-year agreement, which runs through 2032, and has an opt-out clause after 2031, established the first comprehensive revenue-sharing model in women’s professional sports history, significantly raised salaries, enshrined charter travel, set new facility standards and enhanced retirement, health and family planning benefits. In short, “it redefines what it means to be a professional in this league,” WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike told Front Office Sports shortly after the deal was finalized.
Thirty-one players will make more than $1 million this season, five of whom (Mitchell, Boston, Ogunbowale, Shepard and Alanna Smith) were on the court Saturday. Boston’s four-year, $6.3 million deal was the richest contract in league history and the first EPIC extension — a mechanism in the new CBA that fast-tracks the ability for players on rookie-scale deals to earn max money. Fudd, meanwhile, is making $500,000, the biggest rookie salary ever and more than double the 2025 supermax of $249,244.
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The new CBA also ensured there would be basketball this summer.
The WNBA has grown exponentially in recent years. Attendance, viewership and merchandise sales are all soaring, as are franchise valuations — the Golden State Valkyries recently became the first team worth $1 billion. An expansion boom has already added three teams, and will add three more by 2030, and players have become household names. A work stoppage, especially a protracted one, threatened all of that momentum.
Both sides knew as much, which is why they finally compromised. After the two sides shook hands and posed for a photo together, they walked down to the lobby of the Langham to tell reporters camped out that there was a deal. One of the first things WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart said was “[We’re] just excited that we can tell our fans that we’re going to be back.”
The fans were just as excited. Saturday’s thriller between the Wings and Fever was exactly why.
