Engelbert Wants Her Successor Named by New Year's — and the Lottery Is Sunday

NEW YORK — No WNBA team played a game on Thursday. The league still managed a full day: every coach and general manager in New York for the annual competition committee meeting, an outgoing commissioner giving a status report on her own replacement, and a three-day countdown to a draft lottery that could redirect two franchises. The offseason is twelve days old. Here is the WNBA on November 12.

"Nothing to report" — on the biggest job in the league

Cathy Engelbert announced in September that she will retire on Dec. 31. On Thursday, after the committee meetings wrapped, she told a small group of reporters where the search for her successor stands: "Nothing to report, a normal process, a search firm interviewing people," per the Associated Press. Asked by USA Today whether a successor will be named before the new year, she answered, "I hope so." If the search extends past the calendar year, she told the AP, she will stay on as commissioner until her replacement is named.

She would not say how many candidates are being considered. She has said she has been working on her succession plan for about three and a half years and receives periodic updates from Excel Search & Advisory, the search firm interviewing potential replacements. On Oct. 17, she said there are internal and external candidates in the pool: "The good news is there's a lot of interest in the job, which I'm excited about." She has also already given the next commissioner the job description, and it is not a soft one. Ahead of Game 1 of the Finals, she said her successor has to have "very thick skin" — and the confidence to keep the growth going and to build relationships with players, agents, the board of governors, the owners and the stakeholders.

What the committee actually talked about

The meetings brought coaches and general managers from around the league to New York to dissect the season that ended Oct. 31 with Golden State's Game 7 win over Atlanta. On the agenda, per the AP: officiating, the new replay center that will be used next season, and the wave of new practice facilities teams will open over the next couple of seasons. This is also the first offseason under the new collective bargaining agreement finalized last spring, and Engelbert said teams will have their normal allotment of time to sign free agents and handle normal business.

The number she sounded happiest about is 50. Next season's schedule jumps to 50 games from 44, and for once there is no interruption for international play — no Olympics, no women's FIBA World Cup sitting in the middle of the summer. The season might even end a little earlier than this year, when the Finals ran to Oct. 31. "There was no specific news, obviously, we have other meetings over the next couple of weeks into December," Engelbert said.

The ledger she hands over

Engelbert took the job in 2019 after more than 30 years at Deloitte, where she had been CEO since 2015. "I certainly never set out to become the commissioner of the WNBA," she said on Oct. 17. "When I accepted this role in 2019, after more than three decades at Deloitte, I thought it would be a brief final chapter in a long career in business. Instead, it became seven and a half of the most meaningful, demanding and rewarding years of my life."

The record she leaves is hard to argue with on paper: team values, television ratings and player salaries all climbed, the league grew from 12 teams to 15 by 2026 with Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029) and Philadelphia (2030) already announced, and she helped negotiate an 11-year, $3.1 billion media rights agreement. USA Today's account paired that growth with the fair caveat — her tenure also raised questions about her ability to lead the league through an era of sharply increased attention. Both things are true, and her successor inherits both.

Sunday is the other succession

The lottery arrives first, and it is not subtle about what it is for. On Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN, following the UConn–Louisville game, the league draws the first two picks of the 2027 draft; the remaining lottery teams slot in by record. Houston — the former Connecticut Sun, reborn as the Comets — and the Toronto Tempo each hold 329 of the 1,000 combinations, a 32.9% shot at No. 1. Behind them: Washington, holding Chicago's pick, at 16.1%; Seattle at 9.3%; Portland at 5.2%; and Los Angeles twice, at 2.4% with its own pick and 1.2% with Phoenix's. Houston, which won the head-to-head tiebreaker, cannot fall below No. 3. Toronto is guaranteed at least the No. 4 pick. We laid out the full lottery picture on Wednesday, Sparks price tag included.

The prize, if she enters, is JuJu Watkins. The USC senior missed all of last season with a torn ACL — 588 days between regular-season games — and has spent two games looking like the absence never happened: 21 points in the Nov. 2 opener against UNLV, then 32 points, a career-high 16 rebounds, six assists and five steals in the 118–40 rout of Utah State on Sunday, a line no Big Ten player had produced in 25 years. USC announced Tuesday that she had been named the AP National Player of the Week. Toronto general manager Monica Wright Rogers told TSN her staff has been watching Watkins since she was 13: "Those of us who are real scouts, we've been watching these prospects for years."

The catch is that nobody knows if Watkins is in this draft. The NCAA now allows players a fifth year of eligibility, and TSN notes most prospects will not make a public decision until the weeks — or days — before the April 12 draft, which falls eight days after the April 4 national championship game. "We're not completely blind, but I don't think that any player has indicated what they plan to do," Wright Rogers said. "So, we're approaching it with that as a variable."

Houston has the same variable and the same stakes: president Jennifer Rizzotti and general manager Morgan Tuck built the league's second-youngest roster through back-to-back 11-win seasons, kept seven players under contract for 2027, and deliberately banked cap space for this winter, with the draft target shaping the free-agency plan. If Watkins stays in school, the class still runs deep — Texas forward Madison Booker, a preseason All-American, sits atop most boards behind her, with Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo and Kentucky's 6-foot-5 Clara Strack behind them.

Also Thursday: the MVP on Clark, and Martin lands in Bendigo

Gabby Williams, who averaged 19.6 points across the seven Finals games and took home the MVP award as Golden State became the fastest expansion team ever to win a title, was asked by CNBC's Alex Sherman about the league's relationship with Caitlin Clark. "What Caitlin has to carry is probably very, very heavy," Williams said, per Athlon Sports. "I think she herself would be the first person to say that she doesn't need to be protected. And I think she's just as competitive. I don't think she asks for anything to be easy. None of us do." Williams enters the second year of her three-year, $3.7485 million contract in 2027 — the title defense starts with the Finals MVP already in the building.

And Kate Martin's offseason took her about as far from Chicago as basketball allows. Martin, who bounced from Los Angeles to a September developmental contract with the Sky in 2026 — 19 games, 2.6 points a night in 7.7 minutes — mutually agreed to terminate her multi-year deal with the Unrivaled 3-on-3 league ahead of its January season, per Athlon Sports, and instead signed with the Bendigo Spirit for the rest of the Australian WNBL season.

The Spirit were 0–5 and last in the standings when they signed her. On Thursday the club posted that she had officially arrived — "She's here!!!!!" — and Martin, a free agent this winter, is expected to debut Friday at 11 p.m. ET against the Sydney Uni Flames. A long travel day, by her own cheerful admission: "Lookin rough after a long travel day — so excited to be here tho."

By Sunday night, the league will know who picks first in April. By New Year's, if Engelbert gets her wish, it will know who runs it next. The growth she is handing over is real. So is the thick skin it is apparently going to require.