CBS Sports Claims The NBA Doesn't Want The WNBA To Exist. Is That True?

Let's be real: the WNBA would have had a hard time getting off the ground, and frankly existing at all in its early years, had the NBA not been there to provide a financial infrastructure worth millions of dollars.

But one reporter with CBS Sports believes that the NBA doesn’t even want the WNBA to exist at all. In the year 2025.

Using Napheesa Collier’s now Internet-infamous speech against WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert as a launching point, CBS reporter Lindsay Gibbs went into a long and confusing rant about how the WNBA is being unfairly treated. It ended in the same place that WNBA proponents go in complaining about the league: players aren’t getting paid enough.

But one line in Gibbs’ article was particularly ridiculous.

"The truth is, most NBA owners never wanted the WNBA to exist in the first place," Gibbs said.

Timeout, what?

Since the WNBA began in 1997, the NBA has funded the WNBA, and since 1997, the WNBA has never turned a profit. That includes the 2024 season, when, despite the biggest amount of popularity the league has ever seen, the WNBA lost $50 million. Yikes.

I don’t think any organization would willingly lose money hand over fist, year after year, all in the name of a sister entity that it actually didn't want to exist. The NBA directly owns roughly 60 percent of the league, so if there was a chance for the NBA to squash the WNBA, it has had, and still does have, all the power to do so.

Instead, many of those who own the NBA have used their voices to support the WNBA. There is actually no evidence we can find that these same people have said they wished it didn't exist.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver (left) has done a lot to ensure WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert (right) has a league to lead. (Getty Images)

Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta said just last year that it was time for Houston "to step up and land a WNBA franchise."

Ted Leonsis, who owns the Washington Wizards and Washington Mystics, said people need to be supporting the WNBA more.

"For us not to be supporting, in the same way, women’s sports as we do men’s sports is bad business. It’s not just the wrong thing to do … It makes no economic sense," Leonsis said in 2020.

Tom Gores, the owner of the Detroit Pistons, was also thrilled in 2025 when it was announced a new WNBA team will be coming to Detroit in 2029. 

"Today marks the long‑hoped‑for return of the WNBA to a city with deep basketball roots and a championship tradition," Gores said.

You get the picture. 

The dynamic between the two leagues is certainly messy, but it's silly and lacking credibility to accuse the NBA of wanting the WNBA to go under. If that were a thing, as Gibbs of CBS Sports claims so matter of factly, it's sure not anything NBA owners ever say publicly, and it's sure not supported by a dwindling of support by the NBA, financial or otherwise.

Makes you wonder how Gibbs drew that conclusion. Of course, she never explained herself.