Another week, another new league to take advantage of the boom of opportunities that underserviced audiences and platforms–not to mention pros looking to make a few extra bucks from increasingly nichy marketers–are creating.
On Friday night a new 3-on-3 basketball league for professional women, given the unique non-acronym name of UNRIVALED, kicked off its inagural season in its made-for-TV venue with the purchased monicker of Wayfair Arena, a production studio turned into an 850-seat home for three dozen of the best the WNBA has to offer (well, with one notable exception).
As THE SPORTING NEWS’ Gilbert McGregor crowed in his preview that dropped hours before the first tipoff:
With historic backing from across the sports world, Unrivaled has given some of the game’s biggest stars a domestic alternative for basketball outside of the WNBA season.
The level of star power taking part in Unrivaled’s inaugural season cannot be overstated. Co-founder Breanna Stewart is one of seven former No. 1 overall picks to take part in 2025, a group that also includes 10-time All-Star Brittney Griner, 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston and Stewart’s Liberty teammate, Sabrina Ionescu.
While seven of the league’s 36 players once heard their name called first in the WNBA Draft, the star power doesn’t stop there. Unrivaled co-founder and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Napheesa Collier and rising star Angel Reese are among other headliners taking their talents to South Beach for Year 1 of the league.
And the reason it’s all unfolding in that single venue is due to the fact that no existing court in the world could accommodate the unprecedented design of the game that these women have concopted, as FOR THE WIN’s Meghan T. Hall explained:
A typical WNBA court is 94 feet by 50 feet, but Unrivaled’s full court is condensed—49.2 feet by 72 feet—a stark difference. Instead of the 10-minute quarters typically associated with women’s basketball, there will be three seven-minute quarters. The fourth quarter will work a bit differently. It will be known as the “winning quarter.” The team with the highest score through three quarters will have 11 points added to its total. Both teams will play in the fourth quarter until they reach that total. Teams will never play overtime.
A typical WNBA shot clock is 24 seconds, but Unrivaled is expected to be much more fast-paced. The shot clock will only be 18 seconds.
Additionally, there’s a small change at the end of the quarter. Clocks will stop on any made baskets during the final 30 seconds of a period.
If a player is fouled, regardless of the shot type, there will only be one free throw assessed. The lone free throw is worth two points on fouls committed during two-point baskets and three points for any foul committed during a three-point attempt. Any and-1 opportunities are worth just one point.
Unrivaled is keeping the standard six-fouls-per-game limit. However, if a team gets into a situation where it only has three remaining players, and one picks up a sixth foul, that player can stay in the game. However, that player will pick up technical fouls for each additional foul after that.
It’s a pace and a condensing consistent with the fewer number of players and on-site fans. Traditional basketball fans may not necessarily find it to their liking. But there’s plenty of that available to them already this time of year–men’s pro and college, not to mention a growing women’s college array which is occupying more and more prime real estate on networks and platforms like ESPN, FOX Sports and Peacock, not to mention their respective conference-centric iterations. UNRIVALED’s games are airing exclusively on the bastard childs of the sport, TNT, truTV and MAX, whose NBA days are numbered and where March Madness is months away.
That said, it’s a far more significant presence than any men’s iteration of 3 X 3, typically played in the dead of summer in far emptier venues, has yet to have. And the action itself so far hasn’t been all that bad, as CLUTCH SPORTS’
The first-ever game in Unrivaled between the Lunar Owls BC and the Mist ended dramatically, thanks to Skylar Diggins-Smith. The Seattle Storm point guard iced the game with a three-point shot over a defender and won the game, 84-80. She ran across the court and was chased by her teammates.
And CBS SPORTS’Jack Maloney & Erica Ayala noted that the competitive excitement continued yesterday:
Day 2 served as the debut for the two teams that didn’t play Friday, Phantom BC and Laces BC. The Phatom struggled to find a rhythm due to being shorthanded due to an calf injury to Marina Mabrey, who’ll be out for two to four weeks. Sabrina Ionescu hit the court in a competitive game for the first time since her offseason surgery and led the way for her team with 14 points. Laces guard Kayla McBride led all scorers with 25 points and went 6 of 12 from the perimeter to lead her team to a 86-48 win. Tiffany Hayes tallied nine assists to help the Laces.
In the second game, Skylar Diggins-Smith recorded her second game-winning bucket for the Lunar Owls, though this time it was with a free throw. Collier, who is also the Lunar Owls (2-0) captain, led all scorers with 31 points in the 79-70 defeat of Rose BC (0-2).
But you’ll note that one Caitlin Clark is conspicously missing–not that she needs the work or, at this rate, the money. She spent yesterday in a nice warm skybox watching something that happened to be going head-to-head with those Saturday games, along with a fellow female superstar who assured that even the more curious young females who UNRIVALED’s sponsors are targeting will have to wait at least until the next crop of games to attract.
Fortunately, there’s still ample opportunity to do, as USA TODAY’s Safid Deen wrote:
Unrivaled…will play its inaugural season from January to mid-March. Games will be played at Wayfair Arena in Medley, Fla., which is in the Miami metropolitan area, on mostly Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays. There is one Thursday and one Tuesday game during the season, and the semifinals are on a Sunday. TNT will broadcast all Friday and Monday games, while TruTV handles Saturday broadcasts. All games will be available to live stream on Max.
Four of the six teams will compete in the league’s playoffs semifinal games March 16, leading to the March 17 final. There will also be a mid-season 1v1 tournament in February to determine the best one-on-one player in the league.
Yes, that does happen to fully coincide with all of the other 5-on-5 hoops out there–even the 1v1 tournament will take place around the time of NBA All-Star weekend. I’ll be especially curious to see if even MAX gives up some of its still-valuable promo time on NBA games to promote it at the expense of those crucial Food Network competitions that have tended to get their prime real estate of late.
Do remember that it’s taken the WNBA 28 years to get to the point where they had enough recognizable names and appeal to warrant any sort of spin-off, and that the so-called explosion of women’s sports is still essentially in its infancy. But it’s one of the few growth areas left, and it’s actually in the game’s best interest to take what Clark supercharged them with and provide additional exposure to her rivals. It might even get some other basketball fans to take notice at some point.
It definitely got me to take notice. Who knows, maybe at some point some others might as well, even though none of these teams are likely to playing the Bulls any time soon.
Courage…