Cathy Engelbert will retire as WNBA commissioner at the end of 2026, the league announced Friday. She has held the post since 2019, when she became the first person in league history to hold the commissioner title.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver praised her for presiding over the league’s biggest stretch of growth, and Engelbert said she was leaving with gratitude and optimism for what comes next.

“Over the years, it has been amazing to watch WNBA players thrive and lead the massive cultural surge around women’s sports,” Engelbert said in a statement. “I retire knowing we have built something bigger, stronger, and more enduring than we could have imagined."

"I am grateful to the WNBA and NBA team owners and staff, players, investors, fans, and the powerhouse league office staff, who believed in what this league could become," she added. "I retire with immense gratitude and tremendous optimism for the future of the WNBA, with the best yet to come.”

It's cute, and all that she is taking credit for the league's growth, and who can blame her, really? But we all know why the league secured $3.1 billion in media rights, expansion teams, higher player salaries, and charter flights for all.

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It was that resilient, sharpshooting, corn-fed girl from Iowa.

The other reality is that Engelbert is high-tailing it out after a year defined by failing to adequately promote Caitlin Clark at best, allowing her to get her a** handed to her physically at worst, and a fight over women’s sports that the league office treated solely as a public-relations problem.

So sad and pathetic was her reign that Engelbert couldn't, in the wake of the Sophie Cunningham non-troversy, tell you definitively what the 'W' stands for in 'WNBA.'

While her last hurrah is putting revenue growth front and center, it's still important to note that the league is heavily subsidized by the NBA and saw more than $40 million in losses in 2024 — Clark’s rookie season. You know, the season that had generated the most interest, in part because fans had never seen a women's basketball player able to throw daggers from the logo, and also in part because some analysts still thought Angel Reese had the potential to be a rival.

The latter never panned out due to Reese's perpetual inability to make layups.

The point remains. Engelbert never put Clark at the center of the product the way the ratings already had. Worse, she couldn't muster the courage to step up for her biggest star when she was repeatedly being borderline assaulted on the floor in plain view for the sports world to see.

In fact, so concerned was Engelbert about stepping up for a straight white woman in a league dominated by black lesbians, that she made it a point to speak in defense of Alyssa Thomas after the Phoenix Mercury forward throat-punched and stepped on Clark.

“The WNBA vehemently condemns any and all forms of hate,” the soon-to-be ex-commissioner said shortly after the incident. "The safety and well-being of everyone in our community is always the league’s top priority."

Such a statement would have been an appropriate defense of Clark. But she was absurdly and unbelievably defending Thomas after the Mercury player claimed she was getting threats on social media.

In fact, Engelbert didn't even want to suspend Thomas for one game and instead had to reportedly be talked into it by Silver.

More recently, Engelbert struggled with handling concerns about biological males participating in women's sports, refusing to back a common-sense assertion from Cunningham that men don't belong in girls' locker rooms.

"I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men," Cunningham said.

That perfectly reasonable take prompted WNBA owners and players to harass Clark's teammate, leading to DiJonai Carrington intentionally attacking her on the court, and prompting two men to declare for the WNBA draft by suggesting they were transitioning.

That last part proved how out of her depth Engelbert was in handling negative press. The league held a meeting to figure out what defines a "woman" for the purposes of competing in a women's league, and ... were left perplexed.

Other than those debacles, it was a great year for the league. 

Engelbert leaves a bigger WNBA, but one with a much smaller grasp of reality. If players like Clark and Cunningham leave (one due to injury, the other due to making a fortune off the court), the league will go back to tiny crowds and low TV viewership. It will collapse. And even if she's gone, that will be Engelbert's legacy.

There has been no indication of who might replace her next season. Enes Kanter Freedom should throw his hat in the ring,