‘All of the players hate her guts’: Dave Portnoy reacts to WNBA commissioner’s shocking announcement
· Yahoo Sports
Last Friday, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced she would retire from her role effective December 31. 2026. Engelbert has served as the league commissioner since 2019 and has relished her seven-and-a-half-year tenure. “I love women’s basketball and am not going anywhere yet,” Engelbert said. The news came as a shock to the league, but her announcement seemed to have come at an appropriate time.
Lately, the WNBA has faced significant public scrutiny over player harassment on social media and cultural discussions over league participants. With Engelbert at the center of this turmoil, players and WNBA observers have questioned whether she could handle such pressure. Engelbert insisted that her decision to retire was of her own accord and “she did not feel any pressure to step down from NBA or WNBA stakeholders.”
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Recently, Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy gave his reaction to the WNBA news, calling her retirement a ‘lie.’
Cathy Engelbert “retiring” will be good for the WNBA. She has done nothing to help the league, it has succeeded in spite of her pic.twitter.com/8paAW4UmWg
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 7, 2026
“As far as Engelbert’s decision to retire, that’s a lie, right? She was fired, and they gave her the dignity of saying she was going to retire…Listen, she has done nothing to help this league really; it’s successful despite itself because of the overwhelming interest in Caitlin Clark. In that regard, she’s sort of like the commissioner of the NFL, alright; it like grows and grows and grows despite Goodell being inept,” Portnoy said.
“They had to get rid of her; you gotta get somebody to get this league to get along and put the issues that are dominating the headlines, whether it be ‘can a man play this sport,’ the race relations, and get it a little bit more back on basketball. But yeah, she was fired, so there’s not much more to it. She was deservedly fired; all the players hate her guts. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you’re on; nobody likes her. So she was forced out, and the writing was on the wall when the NBA commissioner basically said, ‘she’s kinda gotta get things under control,’ so not surprising at all.”
As WNBA play has paused for the 2026 FIBA World Cup games, it will be interesting to see the direction the league takes for the rest of the season when it resumes.
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